Idolatry Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===General=== The oldest forms of the ancient religions of India apparently made no use of cult images. While the [[Vedas|Vedic literature]] leading up to [[Hinduism]] is extensive, in the form of [[Samhita]]s, [[Brahmana]]s, [[Aranyaka]]s and [[Upanishad]]s, and has been dated to have been composed over a period of centuries (1200 BC to 200 BC),<ref name="Salmond2006p15"/> [[historical Vedic religion]] appears not to have used cult images up to around 500 BC at least. The early Buddhist and [[Jain]] (pre-200 BC) traditions suggest no evidence of idolatry. The Vedic literature mentions many gods and goddesses, as well as the use of [[Homa (ritual)|Homa]] (votive ritual using fire), but it does not mention images or their worship.<ref name="Salmond2006p15"/><ref>{{cite book|author=Richard Payne|editor=Michael Witzel|title=Homa Variations: The Study of Ritual Change Across the Longue Durée|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tIShCgAAQBAJ|year=2015|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-935158-9|pages=1–5, 143–148}}; Phyllis Granoff (2000), [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1004883605055 Other people's rituals: Ritual Eclecticism in early medieval Indian religious], Journal of Indian Philosophy, Volume 28, Issue 4, pages 399–424</ref> The ancient Buddhist, Hindu and Jaina texts discuss the nature of existence, whether there is or is not a [[creator deity]] such as in the [[Nasadiya Sukta]] of the ''[[Rigveda]]'', they describe meditation, they recommend the pursuit of simple monastic life and self-knowledge, they debate the nature of absolute reality as [[Brahman]] or [[Śūnyatā]], yet the ancient Indian texts mention no use of images. Indologists such as the [[Max Muller]], [[Jan Gonda]], [[Pandurang Vaman Kane]], [[Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar]], [[Horace Hayman Wilson]], [[Stephanie W. Jamison|Stephanie Jamison]] and other scholars state that "there is no evidence for icons or images representing god(s)" in the ancient religions of India. Use of cult images developed among the Indian religions later,<ref name="Salmond2006p15">{{cite book|author=Noel Salmond|title=Hindu Iconoclasts: Rammohun Roy, Dayananda Sarasvati, and Nineteenth-Century Polemics against Idolatry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vu50CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA15|year=2006|publisher=Wilfrid Laurier University Press|isbn=978-1-55458-128-3|pages=15–17}}</ref><ref>Stephanie W. Jamison (2011), The Ravenous Hyenas and the Wounded Sun: Myth and Ritual in Ancient India, Cornell University Press, {{ISBN|978-0801477324}}, pages 15-17</ref> perhaps first in Buddhism, where large images of the Buddha appear by the 1st century AD. According to John Grimes, a professor of [[Indian philosophy]], Indian thought denied even dogmatic idolatry of its scriptures. Everything has been left to challenge, arguments and enquiry, with the medieval Indian scholar [[Vācaspati Miśra]] stating that not all scripture is authoritative, only scripture which "reveals the identity of the individual self and the supreme self as the non-dual Absolute".<ref>{{cite book| author=John Grimes| title=Problems and Perspectives in Religious Discourse |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ySff1LxPHp8C&pg=PA60| year=1994| publisher=State University of New York Press|isbn=978-0-7914-1791-1| pages=60–61}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page