Religion has always worked as an important element in human history. One of the very first forms of religion, Totemism, traces back to the era in which most of the populations relied on traditional economies of hunting, gathering, or mixed farming. Along with Totemism, a system of belief that humans worshipped spiritual things such as animals, plants, or stones, Animism and Shamanism also became popular and well known among groups of people as those religions developed and accustomed their shapes in accordance with the society and various social aspects of the time. As the society changes, many religions, coming up with their unique aims of important religious values, sometimes similar and sometimes different from each other’s, have emerged. Many of them disappeared, some of them are kept within small groups of people, and very few of them became the mainstream religions. One of the mainstream religions is Hinduism. First emerged in South Asia, the idea of Hinduism is based on Veda, the oldest religion and literature of ancient India in existence. Hinduism does not deny the existence of many gods; thus is classified as polytheism.

One might ask from where these sacred believes or religion first emerged. Mircea Eliade theorized that hierophany, a manifestation of the sacred, is the basis of the religion. In his book The Sacred & The Profane, Eliade analyzed this massive idea of religion with four categories—sacred space, sacred time, sacred nature, and sacred self—under the assumption that every religion possesses these four frameworks in common. Hinduism, the third biggest religion in the world following Christianity and Islam, also follows Eliade’s framework.

According to Eliade, for religious men, the nonhomogeneous characteristic of the spatial aspect is shown in sacred places of the region. The river Ganges, also called Ganga in Hindi, has long been considered as a sacred place of Hinduism. Every morning Hindus wash with the holy water of the river Ganges. Some of them brush their teeth and some of them wash their hair while looking at others scattering ashes of the dead. Hindus often believe that scattering ashes of the loved ones in Ganga will bless the dead ones and that by taking bath at least once in the Ganga can they complete their lives. At night, Hindus gather on the shore of the river Ganges and carry out a ceremony called Puja, a religious ritual. The Ganga, worshipped as a goddess, plays an important role of purifying people’s soul in this ritual.

The idea of cosmos and chaos is another framework for religious men’s view toward the space. There are three major gods in Hinduism: Brahma, the god of the Creation; Vishnu, the god the salvation; and Shiva, the god of destruction and demolition. Vishnu and Shiva playing the opposite roles are often considered as the representations of cosmos and chaos respectively. The historical fact that the faith in Shiva emerged prior to that of Vishnu demonstrates Eliade’s idea of cosmos and chaos in that cosmos is a world created out of primordial chaos by the gods.

Hinduism also has three cosmic levels: earth, heaven, and underground. The axis mundi—the center of the world which links together all three cosmic levels—in Hinduism is Varanasi, the holiest city considered by Hindus situated on the banks of the Ganges River. It is said that even the most atrocious criminals can also be forgiven and can directly head toward the heaven when they die in Varanasi and when the ashes of their dead bodies are scattered in the Ganga. Great amount of Hindus visit Varanasi yearly, seeking for their better samsara, the Hindi term of expressing the eternal cycle of birth. The center of the world for Hindus, Varanasi is believed to have the spiritual power that covers not only the three cosmic levels but also the three cosmic times—past, present, and future.

The idea of sacred and profane is also adapted to the time. The sacred time can be experienced during religious festivals and ceremonies when the profane time is experienced in ordinary days. Eliade suggests that the world, the cosmos, regains the sanctity at each New Year; thus New Year’s Day is greatly valued. Deepavali, meaning “light parade” in Sanskrit, is a new year’s day when following the Hindi calendar. Hindus celebrate this day by decorating houses and streets with splendid lanterns which represents the good triumphing over the evil. People visit Hindi temples and held traditional religious services for Brahma, the god of the Creation, and pray for his grace.

Hindi myth of suggests how the cosmos first came into existence. In the beginning, there was this basic principle called Brahman, which had a desire to create the world. In order to realize its desire, it created water and planted a seed. The seed became a golden egg in which the god Brahma was born. After a long period of meditation, Brahma gained a power to replace the darkness with the brightness. Brahma then breaks the golden egg into two pieces. The upper half of the golden egg became the sky (heaven), and the rest became the earth. After Brahma created the basic elements of the world such as the sun and the moon, other two major gods, Vishnu and Shiva appeared and controlled the world by balancing their antithetical powers. Shiva, the god of destruction, rode a bull named Nandi when moving. According to Eliade, religious man believes that the only way he can become a true man is imitating the gods and heroes in the myth, and this suggests the most important function of myth: storing the significant human activities related to the religion. The Hindi myth of Brahma reveals why Hindus value water, especially the river Ganges. And the myth of Shiva riding Nandi made religious Hindus to deify a bull. Thus, most of the Hindus do not eat beef and they cannot possess bulls (only neutered bulls and cows can be used as methods for farming).

One of the most important believes among Hindus is the eternal cycle of lives. The Hindi caste system of dividing people with four castes is justified by Hinduism. According to Hinduism, people’s present castes are decided by their past lives, and even those currently in the lowest caste can become the highest caste when they reincarnate if they work hard and live pious lives. This idea of eternal cycle of life among Hindus is the basis of the lasting factor of caste system even though it is often referred to as the most vicious status system ever created in the world.

The third category Eliade proposes in The Sacred & The Profane is the sacred nature. Sacred nature is the category that examines hierophany in nature. The most evident hierophany shown in Hinduism is the water worshipping shown in the case of the Ganges River. Another hierophany shown is worshipping certain stones as a reincarnation of the god Shiva. For instance, a stone in Wahiawa, Hawaii, historically used as an indication for Indian chief’s tomb, is now being worshipped by Hindus as a reincarnation of the god Shiva. Hindus called Lotus built a temple around this stone in 1998 and have attended a service since then. Until now it is regarded as a sacred place among Hindus in Hawaii.

The last category which analyzes the religion suggested by Eliade is the idea of sacred self. In order to study the sacred self, there must be an investigation of the primitive world, the time even before the invention of agriculture. In primitive world, the religious man should be fully integrated with the nature and the cosmic world. This does not necessarily mean that the man is unconscious of himself as a complete human being in the nature, but rather the man knows his role in the nature as a harmonious element of the nature.

According to Hindi myth, a human being is first made by the sexual union between Brahma, the god of the Creation, and his daughter, the goddess Saraswati. When Brahma first saw the beautiful Saraswati born from his own body, he directly felt in love with her. Brahma pleaded his daughter, who went to the sky to escape from her father, to realize his love toward her. He said Saraswati that his love toward her is the Creator’s love not a mundane love. Persuaded by Brahma’s cry that only her and Brahma’s integration can make things in the universe, Saraswati finally comes down to the earth and goes into a cave for a year (360 years for humans) with Brahma and creates an ancestor of all human being, Manu. Thus, the first creation of human being in the world of Hinduism was a product of the God’s indulgence in beauty. Likewise, Hindiusm regards sexual union as a holy act. The integration of two bodies becomes a religious ritual which follows the holy act of the Creation between Brahma and Saraswati.

According to The Sacred & The Profane, Hinduism can be categorized in four categories of the sacred place, sacred time, sacred nature, and sacred self. These four categories analyzing various religions should be adapted to the religions in a proper way so that mistakes are not made when analyzing.