ABSTRACT

Whatever the religions may have been which were practised by the other peoples of ancient India, the documented religious history of the sub-continent begins with the arrival of the Āryas in the north-western regions. Hindus and Western scholars agree that a corpus of scriptures, known as the Veda (‘[sacred] knowledge’) and associated with those ancient Āryas, forms the basis of all subsequent developments of Hinduism. But it is important to realise that what either group means by this differs fundamentally.