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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

Where does the 4000 figure come from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hinduism traces the roots of Hinduism as far back as possibly 1900 BC.

The Vedas are supposedly that old

Yes, but (without being a scholar of religion) I had always assumed that Hinduism was far older than its oldest surviving texts, just as Judaism, in some form, is older than whatever year we date the Torah to.

it depends on what you call 'hinduism'. it's one of the world's most heterodox religions and has absorbed a huge amount of cultural tradition from at least 300 languages.

The rig veda is probably what most people agree is one of the foundational texts of hinduism, but it dates to about 1500 BC.

However, the vedas probably absorbed a lot of earlier cultural tradition from the indus valley civilization, especially worship of Shiva-like deities. How much is however, debated.

just like mesopotamia, there was a lot of syncretism.

I imagine that when your career is arts based, you've likely assimilated that society's labels are arbitrary and determined in large part by competitive interests, because there is less of a fundamental truth than they would imply once established. Since this is a software engineering forum, we tend to expect more objectivity in our labels. Ironically when you think about it because software labels are so obviously artificial.

I thought the jury was still out on whether the so called Pasupati seal actually shows Shiva

My read is that it's the other way around. i.e. what one could reasonably call Judaism is a good deal younger than the Torah, Hinduism a good deal younger than the Vedas. There are of course traditions within the religions that go back to those writings and further, but take that to its extreme and they all presumably stem from some ur-religion.

I guess like so many questions it comes down to how you choose to define and name things.

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