Indonesia: Peoples and Histories - Tengku Muhammad Dhani Iqbal

EARLY BEGINNINGS
HINDUISM AND BUDDHISM
Hinduism is the term coined by Westerners to describe Indian religious
beliefs and practices derived from a wide body of oral and
written literatures and represented in temples, statuary, carvings, paintings,
ritual, and social organization. Central to early Indian philosophical
thought was belief in a soul that progresses through many forms of animal
and human life until perfect comprehension grants it release from a
chain of existences. Buddhism is a variant within Hinduism which
teaches that the path to release from existence is through the shedding of
desire and gaining of a knowledge derived from both book learning and
intuitive insight. Hinduism emphasizes purity and its maintenance by
avoidance of pollution; Buddhism emphasizes the ending of desire.
In India philosophers wrote in Sanskrit, which attained an elevated
status as the language of learned communication, philosophy, ritual, and
literature. Sanskrit literature covers philosophy, architecture, astronomy,
art, metrical poetry, grammar, and medicine. Buddhism had its own literature
in its own sacred language, Pali, that recorded the life and teachings
of the Buddha, recounted his previous lives, stories of spiritually
charged individuals and gods, and detailed rules for monastic living.
The concept of one god in many manifestations was structured by literary
and artistic conventions. Each god had specific characteristics;
there were rules for portraying them in statues and paintings, and distinct
rituals for their worship. The Hindu gods lived on Mount Meru, a cosmic,
holy hill surrounded by oceans. Specific places in the Indian landscape
are associated with the descent of gods from Mount Meru and their
worldly adventures in human forms. Places were also associated with the
Buddha. Pilgrimage to holy sites inducted people of different social
classes into different levels of knowledge.
Hindu and Buddhist temples were constructed in two forms: as enclosed
space and as diagrammatic space. The enclosed space held a statue
of the god. The form of the temple and its positioning along the lines of
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