Religion

== Etymology and history of concept ==
[[File:Sakyamuni, Lao Tzu, and Confucius - Google Art ProjectFXD.jpg|thumb|The [[Buddha]], [[Laozi]], and [[Confucius]] – founders of [[Buddhism]], [[Taoism]] (Daoism) and [[Confucianism]] – in a [[Ming dynasty]] painting]]

===Etymology===
{{See also|History of religion}}

The term ''religion'' comes from both [[Old French]] and [[Anglo-Norman language|Anglo-Norman]] (1200s [[Common Era|CE]]) and means respect for sense of right, moral obligation, sanctity, what is sacred, reverence for the gods.<ref>{{OEtymD|religion}}</ref><ref>"Religion" Oxford English Dictionary https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/161944 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211003070115/https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/161944 |date=3 October 2021 }}</ref> It is ultimately derived from the [[Latin]] word {{lang|la|[[Religio|religiō]]}}. According to Roman philosopher [[Cicero]], {{lang|la|religiō}} comes from {{lang|la|relegere}}: {{lang|la|re}} (meaning "again") + {{lang|la|lego}} (meaning "read"), where {{lang|la|lego}} is in the sense of "go over", "choose", or "consider carefully". Contrarily, some modern scholars such as [[Tom Harpur]] and [[Joseph Campbell]] have argued that {{lang|la|religiō}} is derived from {{lang|la|religare}}: {{lang|la|re}} (meaning "again") + {{lang|la|ligare}} ("bind" or "connect"), which was made prominent by [[Augustine of Hippo|St. Augustine]] following the interpretation given by [[Lactantius]] in {{lang|la|Divinae institutiones}}, IV, 28.<ref>In ''The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light.'' Toronto. Thomas Allen, 2004. {{ISBN|0-88762-145-7}}</ref><ref>In ''[[The Power of Myth]],'' with Bill Moyers, ed. Betty Sue Flowers, New York, Anchor Books, 1991. {{ISBN|0-385-41886-8}}</ref> The medieval usage alternates with ''order'' in designating bonded communities like those of [[monastic orders]]: "we hear of the 'religion' of the [[Order of the Golden Fleece|Golden Fleece]], of a knight 'of the [[Order of Aviz|religion of Avys]]'".<ref name="Huizinga Middle">{{cite book |last1=Huizinga |first1=Johan |title=The Waning of the Middle Ages |date=1924 |publisher=Penguin Books |page=86|title-link=The Autumn of the Middle Ages }}</ref>

==== {{lang|la|Religiō}} ====
{{Main|Religio}}
In classic antiquity, {{lang|la|religiō}} broadly meant [[conscientiousness]], sense of [[Righteousness|right]], moral [[obligation]], or [[duty]] to anything.<ref>{{cite web |title=Religio |url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0060%3Aentry%3Dreligio |website=Latin Word Study Tool |publisher=Tufts University |access-date=21 February 2021 |archive-date=24 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224155206/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0060%3Aentry%3Dreligio |url-status=live }}</ref> In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root {{lang|la|religiō}} was understood as an individual virtue of [[worship]] in mundane contexts; never as [[doctrine]], practice, or actual source of [[knowledge]].<ref name="Harrison Territories" /><ref name="Roberts Jon">{{cite book|last1=Roberts|first1=Jon|editor1-last=Shank|editor1-first=Michael|editor2-last=Numbers|editor2-first=Ronald|editor3-last=Harrison|editor3-first=Peter|title=Wrestling with Nature: From Omens to Science|date=2011|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0-226-31783-0|page=254|chapter=10. Science and Religion}}</ref> In general, {{lang|la|religiō}} referred to broad social obligations towards anything including family, neighbors, rulers, and even towards [[God]].<ref name="50 great" /> {{lang|la|Religiō}} was most often used by the [[ancient Romans]] not in the context of a relation towards gods, but as a range of general emotions which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context such as [[hesitation]], caution, [[anxiety]], or [[fear]], as well as feelings of being bound, restricted, or inhibited.<ref name="religio roman">{{cite book |last1=Barton |first1=Carlin |last2=Boyarin |first2=Daniel |title=Imagine No Religion : How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities |date=2016 |publisher=Fordham University Press |isbn=978-0-8232-7120-7 |chapter=1. 'Religio' without "Religion" |pages=15–38}}</ref> The term was also closely related to other terms like {{lang|la|scrupulus}} (which meant "very precisely"), and some Roman authors related the term {{lang|la|superstitio}} (which meant too much fear or anxiety or shame) to {{lang|la|religiō}} at times.<ref name="religio roman" /> When {{lang|la|religiō}} came into [[English language|English]] around the 1200s as religion, it took the meaning of "life bound by monastic vows" or monastic orders.<ref name="Huizinga Middle" /><ref name="50 great" /> The compartmentalized concept of religion, where religious and [[worldly]] things were separated, was not used before the 1500s.<ref name="50 great" /> The concept of religion was first used in the 1500s to distinguish the domain of the [[Catholic Church|church]] and the domain of [[civil authorities]]; the [[Peace of Augsburg]] marks such instance,<ref name="50 great">{{cite book|last1=Morreall|first1=John|last2=Sonn|first2=Tamara|title=50 Great Myths about Religions|date=2013|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|isbn=978-0-470-67350-8|pages=12–17|chapter=Myth 1: All Societies Have Religions}}</ref> which has been described by [[Christian Reus-Smit]] as "the first step on the road toward a European system of [[sovereign state]]s."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Reus-Smit |first=Christian |date=April 2011 |title=Struggles for Individual Rights and the Expansion of the International System |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/struggles-for-individual-rights-and-the-expansion-of-the-international-system/9D4AB3695056FA85DCDE1D90D3C551B3 |journal=International Organization |language=en |volume=65 |issue=2 |pages=207–242 |doi=10.1017/S0020818311000038 |s2cid=145668420 |issn=1531-5088}}</ref>

Roman general [[Julius Caesar]] used {{lang|la|religiō}} to mean "obligation of an oath" when discussing captured soldiers making an oath to their captors.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Caesar |first1=Julius |translator-last1=McDevitte |translator-first1=W.A. |translator-first2=W.S. |translator-last2=Bohn |title=The Works of Julius Caesar: Parallel English and Latin |date=2007 |publisher=Forgotten Books |isbn=978-1-60506-355-3 |pages=377–378 |chapter=Civil Wars – Book 1|quote= Sic terror oblatus a ducibus, crudelitas in supplicio, nova religio iurisiurandi spem praesentis deditionis sustulit mentesque militum convertit et rem ad pristinam belli rationem redegit." – (Latin); "Thus the terror raised by the generals, the cruelty and punishments, the new obligation of an oath, removed all hopes of surrender for the present, changed the soldiers' minds, and reduced matters to the former state of war."- (English)}}</ref> Roman naturalist [[Pliny the Elder]] used the term {{lang|la|religiō}} to describe the apparent respect given by elephants to the [[night sky]].<ref>{{cite book |author1=Pliny the Elder |chapter=Elephants; Their Capacity |title=The Natural History, Book VIII |chapter-url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D8%3Achapter%3D1 |publisher=Tufts University |language=en |quote=maximum est elephans proximumque humanis sensibus, quippe intellectus illis sermonis patrii et imperiorum obedientia, officiorum quae didicere memoria, amoris et gloriae voluptas, immo vero, quae etiam in homine rara, probitas, prudentia, aequitas, religio quoque siderum solisque ac lunae veneratio." "The elephant is the largest of them all, and in intelligence approaches the nearest to man. It understands the language of its country, it obeys commands, and it remembers all the duties which it has been taught. It is sensible alike of the pleasures of love and glory, and, to a degree that is rare among men even, possesses notions of honesty, prudence, and equity; it has a religious respect also for the stars, and a veneration for the sun and the moon." |access-date=21 February 2021 |archive-date=7 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210507142052/https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D8%3Achapter%3D1 |url-status=live }}</ref> Cicero used {{lang|la|religiō}} as being related to {{lang|la|cultum deorum}} (worship of the gods).<ref>Cicero, ''De natura deorum'' Book II, Section 8.</ref>

==== {{transliteration|grc|Threskeia}} ====
In [[Ancient Greece]], the Greek term {{transliteration|grc|threskeia}} ({{lang|grc|θρησκεία}}) was loosely translated into Latin as {{lang|la|religiō}} in [[late antiquity]]. {{transliteration|grc|Threskeia}} was sparsely used in classical Greece but became more frequently used in the writings of [[Josephus]] in the 1st century CE. It was used in mundane contexts and could mean multiple things from respectful fear to excessive or harmfully distracting practices of others, to cultic practices. It was often contrasted with the Greek word {{transliteration|grc|deisidaimonia}}, which meant too much fear.<ref name="threskeia greece">{{cite book |last1=Barton |first1=Carlin |last2=Boyarin |first2=Daniel |title=Imagine No Religion : How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities |date=2016 |publisher=Fordham University Press |isbn=978-0-8232-7120-7 |chapter=8. Imagine No 'Threskeia': The Task of the Untranslator  |pages=123–134}}</ref>

===History of the concept of the "religion"===
{{For timeline|Timeline of religion}}

Religion is a modern concept.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pasquier |first1=Michael |title=Religion in America: The Basics |date=2023 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0367691806 |pages=2–3 |quote=Religion is a modern concept. It is an idea with a history that developed, most scholars would agree, out of the social and cultural disruptions of Renaissance and Reformation Europe. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, at a time of unprecedented political transformation and scientific innovation, it became possible for people to differentiate between things religious and things not religious. Such a dualistic understanding of the world was simply not available in such clear terms to ancient and medieval Europeans, to say nothing of people from the continents of North America, South America, Africa, and Asia.}}</ref> The concept was invented recently in the English language and is found in texts from the 17th century due to events such as the splitting of [[Christendom]] during the [[Protestant Reformation]] and [[globalization]] in the [[Age of Exploration]], which involved contact with numerous foreign cultures with non-European languages.<ref name="Harrison Territories">{{cite book |last1=Harrison |first1=Peter |title=The Territories of Science and Religion |date=2015 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-18448-7}}</ref><ref name="Roberts Jon" /><ref name="Religion enlightenment">{{cite book|last1=Harrison|first1=Peter|title='Religion' and the Religions in the English Enlightenment|date=1990|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0-521-89293-3}}</ref> Some argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply the term religion to non-Western cultures,<ref name=dubuisson>{{cite book|first1=Daniel|last1=Dubuisson|title=The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology|date=2007|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore, Md.|isbn=978-0-8018-8756-7}}</ref><ref name="Fitzgerald" /> while some followers of various faiths rebuke using the word to describe their own belief system.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Wilfred Cantwell |url=https://archive.org/details/meaningendofre00smit/page/125/mode/2up |title=The Meaning and End of Religion |publisher=MacMillan |year=1963 |location=New York |pages=125–126 |author-link1=Wilfred Cantwell Smith}}</ref>

The concept of "ancient religion" stems from modern interpretations of a range of practices that conform to a modern concept of religion, influenced by early modern and 19th century Christian discourse.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rüpke |first1=Jörg |title=Religion: Antiquity and its Legacy |date=2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195380774 |pages=7–8| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q-cwmAEACAAJ}}</ref> The concept of religion was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries,<ref name=Nongbri1>{{cite book |last1=Nongbri |first1=Brent |title=Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept|page=152 |quote=Although the Greeks, Romans, Mesopotamians, and many other peoples have long histories, the stories of their respective religions are of recent pedigree. The formation of ancient religions as objects of study coincided with the formation of religion itself as a concept of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.|date=2013 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-15416-0}}</ref><ref name="Religion enlightenment1">{{cite book|last1=Harrison|first1=Peter|title='Religion' and the Religions in the English Enlightenment|url=https://archive.org/details/religionreligion00harr|url-access=limited|date=1990|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|page=[https://archive.org/details/religionreligion00harr/page/n11 1]|isbn=978-0-521-89293-3|quote=That there exist in the world such entities as 'the religions' is an uncontroversial claim...However, it was not always so. The concepts 'religion' and 'the religions', as we presently understand them, emerged quite late in Western thought, during the Enlightenment. Between them, these two notions provided a new framework for classifying particular aspects of human life.}}</ref> despite the fact that ancient sacred texts like the [[Bible]], the [[Quran]], and others did not have a word or even a concept of religion in the original languages and neither did the people or the cultures in which these sacred texts were written.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nongbri |first1=Brent |title=Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept |chapter=2. Lost in Translation: Inserting "Religion" into Ancient Texts |date=2013 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-15416-0}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Morreall|first1=John|last2=Sonn|first2=Tamara|title=50 Great Myths about Religions|date=2013|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|isbn=978-0-470-67350-8|page=13|quote=Many languages do not even have a word equivalent to our word 'religion'; nor is such a word found in either the Bible or the Qur'an.}}</ref> For example, there is no precise equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and [[Judaism]] does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Pluralism Project, Harvard University |title=Judaism - Introductory Profiles |date=2015 |publisher=Harvard University |page=2 |url=https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/files/rpl/files/judaism_pluralism_project_harvard_university_religious_literacy_project_harvard_divinity_school_march_24_2015.pdf?m=1660591091#:~:text=In%20the%20English%2Dspeaking%20Western,and%20practices%20associated%20with%20a |quote=In the English-speaking Western world, “Judaism” is often considered a “religion," but there are no equivalent words for “Judaism” or for “religion” in Hebrew; there are words for “faith,” “law,” or “custom” but not for “religion” if one thinks of the term as meaning solely the beliefs and practices associated with a relationship with God or a vision of transcendence.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=God, Torah, and Israel |url=https://pluralism.org/god-torah-and-israel |website=Pluralism Project - Judaism |publisher=Harvard University |language=en}}</ref><ref>Hershel Edelheit, Abraham J. Edelheit, [https://www.questia.com/library/book/history-of-zionism-a-handbook-and-dictionary-by-abfaham-j-edelheit-hershel-edelheit.jsp History of Zionism: A Handbook and Dictionary] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110624015852/http://www.questia.com/library/book/history-of-zionism-a-handbook-and-dictionary-by-abfaham-j-edelheit-hershel-edelheit.jsp|date=24 June 2011}}, p. 3, citing [[Solomon Zeitlin]], ''The Jews. Race, Nation, or Religion?'' (Philadelphia: Dropsie College Press, 1936).</ref> One of its central concepts is {{transliteration|he|[[halakha]]}}, meaning the walk or path sometimes translated as law, which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of daily life.<ref name="WhitefordII2008">{{cite book |last1=Whiteford |first1=Linda M. |last2=Trotter II |first2=Robert T. |title=Ethics for Anthropological Research and Practice |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZeokAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA22 |year=2008 |publisher=Waveland Press |isbn=978-1-4786-1059-5 |page=22 |access-date=28 November 2015 |archive-date=10 June 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160610090106/https://books.google.com/books?id=ZeokAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA22 |url-status=live }}</ref> Even though the beliefs and traditions of Judaism are found in the ancient world, ancient Jews saw [[Jewish identity]] as being about an ethnic or national identity and did not entail a compulsory belief system or regulated rituals.<ref name="Burns Jewish">{{cite book|last1=Burns|first1=Joshua Ezra|editor1-last=Omar|editor1-first=Irfan|editor2-last=Duffey|editor2-first=Michael|title=Peacemaking and the Challenge of Violence in World Religions|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|isbn=978-1-118-95342-6|chapter=3. Jewish ideologies of Peace and Peacemaking|pages=86–87|date= 2015}}</ref> In the 1st century CE, Josephus had used the Greek term {{transliteration|grc|ioudaismos}} (Judaism) as an ethnic term and was not linked to modern abstract concepts of religion or a set of beliefs.<ref name=Nongbri /> The very concept of "Judaism" was invented by the [[Christian Church]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Boyarin |first1=Daniel |title=Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion |date=2019 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-0-8135-7161-4}}</ref> and it was in the 19th century that Jews began to see their ancestral culture as a religion analogous to Christianity.<ref name="Burns Jewish" /> The Greek word {{transliteration|grc|threskeia}}, which was used by Greek writers such as [[Herodotus]] and Josephus, is found in the [[New Testament]]. {{transliteration|grc|Threskeia}} is sometimes translated as "religion" in today's translations, but the term was understood as generic "worship" well into the [[medieval period]].<ref name=Nongbri>{{cite book |last1=Nongbri |first1=Brent |title=Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept |date=2013 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-15416-0}}</ref> In the Quran, the [[Arabic]] word {{transliteration|ar|[[Din (Arabic)|din]]}} is often translated as religion in modern translations, but up to the mid-1600s translators expressed {{transliteration|ar|din}} as "law".<ref name=Nongbri />

The [[Sanskrit]] word [[dharma]], sometimes translated as religion,<ref name="14.1A: The Nature of Religion">{{cite web |title=14.1A: The Nature of Religion |url=https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Book%3A_Sociology_(Boundless)/14%3A_Religion/14.01%3A_The_Nature_of_Religion/14.1A%3A_The_Nature_of_Religion#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20the%20Sanskrit%20word,and%20ceremonial%20and%20practical%20traditions.&text=Some%20religions%20place%20an%20emphasis%20on%20belief%20while%20others%20emphasize%20practice. |website=Social Sci LibreTexts |access-date=10 January 2021 |language=en |date=15 August 2018 |archive-date=12 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210112070302/https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Book:_Sociology_(Boundless)/14:_Religion/14.01:_The_Nature_of_Religion/14.1A:_The_Nature_of_Religion#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20the%20Sanskrit%20word,and%20ceremonial%20and%20practical%20traditions.&text=Some%20religions%20place%20an%20emphasis%20on%20belief%20while%20others%20emphasize%20practice. |url-status=live }}</ref> also means law. Throughout classical [[South Asia]], the [[Dharmaśāstra|study of law]] consisted of concepts such as [[Prāyaścitta|penance through piety]] and [[Ācāra|ceremonial as well as practical traditions]]. Medieval Japan at first had a similar union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Toshio |last=Kuroda |author-link=Toshio Kuroda|translator1-link=Jacqueline Stone |translator=Jacqueline I. Stone |url=https://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/477.pdf |title=The Imperial Law and the Buddhist Law |access-date=28 May 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030323095019/https://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/477.pdf |archive-date=23 March 2003 |journal=Japanese Journal of Religious Studies |pages= 23.3–4 |date=1996}}</ref><ref>Neil McMullin. ''Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan''. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1984.</ref>

Though traditions, sacred texts, and practices have existed throughout time, most cultures did not align with Western conceptions of religion since they did not separate everyday life from the sacred. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and [[world religions]] first entered the English language.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Harrison |first1=Peter |title=The Territories of Science and Religion |date=2015|page=101 |quote=The first recorded use of "Boudhism" was 1801, followed by "Hindooism" (1829), "Taouism" (1838), and "Confucianism" (1862) (see figure 6). By the middle of the nineteenth century these terms had secured their place in the English lexicon, and the putative objects to which they referred became permanent features of our understanding of the world. |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-18448-7}}</ref><ref name="Josephson 2">{{cite book |last1=Josephson |first1=Jason Ananda |title=The Invention of Religion in Japan |date=2012 |page=12|quote=The early nineteenth century saw the emergence of much of this terminology, including the formation of the terms Boudhism (1801), Hindooism (1829), Taouism (1839), Zoroastri-anism (1854), and Confucianism (1862). This construction of "religions" was not merely the production of European translation terms, but the reification of systems of thought in a way strikingly divorced from their original cultural milieu. The original discovery of religions in different cultures was rooted in the assumption that each people had its own divine "revelation," or at least its own parallel to Christianity. In the same period, however, European and American explorers often suggested that specific African or Native American tribes lacked religion altogether. Instead these groups were reputed to have only superstitions and as such they were seen as less than human.|publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-41234-4}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Morreall|first1=John|last2=Sonn|first2=Tamara|title=50 Great Myths about Religions|date=2013|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|isbn=978-0-470-67350-8|page=12|quote=The phrase "World Religions" came into use when the first Parliament of the World's Religions was held in Chicago in 1893. Representation at the Parliament was not comprehensive. Naturally, Christians dominated the meeting, and Jews were represented. Muslims were represented by a single American Muslim. The enormously diverse traditions of India were represented by a single teacher, while three teachers represented the arguably more homogenous strains of Buddhist thought. The indigenous religions of the Americas and Africa were not represented. Nevertheless, since the convening of the Parliament, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism have been commonly identified as World Religions. They are sometimes called the "Big Seven" in Religious Studies textbooks, and many generalizations about religion have been derived from them.}}</ref> Native Americans were also thought of as not having religions and also had no word for religion in their languages either.<ref name="Josephson 2" /><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rhodes |first1=John |title=An American Tradition: The Religious Persecution of Native Americans |journal=Montana Law Review |date=January 1991 |volume=52 |issue=1 |pages=13–72 |quote=In their traditional languages, Native Americans have no word for religion. This absence is very revealing.}}</ref> No one self-identified as a Hindu or Buddhist or other similar terms before the 1800s.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Morreall|first1=John|last2=Sonn|first2=Tamara|title=50 Great Myths about Religions|date=2013|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|isbn=978-0-470-67350-8|page=14|quote=Before the British colonized India, for example, the people there had no concept "religion" and no concept "Hinduism." There was no word "Hindu" in classical India, and no one spoke of "Hinduism" until the 1800s. Until the introduction of that term, Indians identified themselves by any number of criteria—family, trade or profession, or social level, and perhaps the scriptures they followed or the particular deity or deities upon whose care they relied in various contexts or to whom they were devoted. But these diverse identities were united, each an integral part of life; no part existed in a separate sphere identified as "religious." Nor were the diverse traditions lumped together under the term "Hinduism" unified by sharing such common features of religion as a single founder, creed, theology, or institutional organization.}}</ref> "Hindu" has historically been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people indigenous to the [[Indian subcontinent]].<ref name=brian111>{{citation|last=Pennington|first=Brian K.|title=Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7drluePK-acC&pg=PA111|year=2005|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-803729-3|pages=111–118|access-date=5 August 2018|archive-date=17 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191217044908/https://books.google.com/books?id=7drluePK-acC&pg=PA111|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Lloyd Ridgeon|title=Major World Religions: From Their Origins to the Present|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HFKBAgAAQBAJ |year= 2003|publisher= Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-42935-6|pages=10–11|quote=It is often said that Hinduism is very ancient, and in a sense this is true ... . It was formed by adding the English suffix -ism, of Greek origin, to the word ''Hindu'', of Persian origin; it was about the same time that the word ''Hindu'', without the suffix -ism, came to be used mainly as a religious term. ... The name ''Hindu'' was first a geographical name, not a religious one, and it originated in the languages of Iran, not of India. ... They referred to the non-Muslim majority, together with their culture, as 'Hindu'. ... Since the people called Hindu differed from Muslims most notably in religion, the word came to have religious implications, and to denote a group of people who were identifiable by their Hindu religion. ... However, it is a religious term that the word ''Hindu'' is now used in English, and Hinduism is the name of a religion, although, as we have seen, we should beware of any false impression of uniformity that this might give us.}}</ref> Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of religion since there was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning, but when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this idea.<ref name="Invention Japan">{{cite book |last1=Josephson |first1=Jason Ananda |title=The Invention of Religion in Japan |date=2012 |pages=1, 11–12 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-41234-4}}</ref><ref name="japan Galen">{{cite book|last1=Zuckerman|first1=Phil|last2=Galen|first2=Luke|last3=Pasquale|first3=Frank|title=The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Societies|date=2016|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-992494-3|pages=39–40|chapter=2. Secularity around the World|quote=It was only in response to Western cultural contact in the late nineteenth century that a Japanese word for religion (shukyo) came into use. It tends to be associated with foreign, founded, or formally organized traditions, particularly Christianity and other monotheisms, but also Buddhism and new religious sects.}}</ref>

According to the [[philologist]] [[Max Müller]] in the 19th century, the root of the English word religion, the Latin {{lang|la|religiō}}, was originally used to mean only reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, [[pietas|piety]] (which Cicero further derived to mean diligence).<ref>[[Max Müller]], ''Natural Religion'', p. 33, 1889</ref><ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2340976| title = Lewis & Short, ''A Latin Dictionary''| access-date = 21 February 2021| archive-date = 26 February 2021| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210226000346/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2340976| url-status = live}}</ref> Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, and India, as having a similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religion today, they would have only called law.<ref>{{cite book|author=[[Max Müller]] | title=Introduction to the Science of Religion: Four Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution with Two Essays on False Analogies, and the Philosophy of Mythology | year=1870 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aM0FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA28 |page=28 }}</ref>