Essentials of Hinduism — Vivekananda's Teachings in Brief हिन्दू धर्म के मूल तत्त्व

Who was Swami Vivekananda?

Swami Vivekananda (born Narendranath Datta, 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902) grew up in Calcutta and studied Western philosophy before becoming the leading disciple of the mystic Sri Ramakrishna. After his teacher's death in 1886 he took monastic vows and wandered across India. His address to the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in September 1893 made him famous, and he spent the next years lecturing in the United States and Britain. Returning to India in 1897, he gave a celebrated series of lectures from Colombo to Almora and founded the Ramakrishna Mission. He died at Belur Math, near Calcutta, aged 39. His birthday is observed in India as National Youth Day.

How the book came to be

Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati, in the Kumaon hills, was founded in 1899 at Vivekananda's wish by his English disciples Captain James Henry Sevier and Charlotte Sevier. It became one of the main publishers of the Ramakrishna movement, issuing the journal Prabuddha Bharata and Vivekananda's Complete Works. Its publication office is now in Kolkata.

The earliest copy of Essentials of Hinduism we were able to examine, a scan held by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, was published from Mayavati by Swami Pavitrananda, with a preface dated October 1937. The preface explains the aim: many people want to know what Hinduism is and are surprised to learn that it has no single creed, so the editors offer a 'bird's-eye view' in the words of the man they regarded as its best modern exponent. The passages, they say, were taken from different places and arranged in a logical order for readers without time for larger volumes. The booklet does not say which lecture each passage comes from; we have traced the main sources below. Advaita Ashrama still publishes it, in a paperback of about 60 pages.

The 23 topics and where they come from

• Origin of the word Hindu — The Vedas: Vivekananda explains that 'Hindu' began as a geographical name, the Persian form of Sindhu (the Indus), and now covers everyone living in India whatever their religion. He prefers 'Vaidika' or, better, 'Vedantist'. The Vedas are described as eternal spiritual laws discovered, not composed, by the rishis, divided into a ritual portion (karma kanda) and a knowledge portion (jnana kanda). These passages come from his lecture 'Vedantism', given at Jaffna in Ceylon in January 1897.
• Different schools of thought — Vedanta is not the Advaita system only: Indian sects fall broadly into dualists and non-dualists, represented by Ramanuja and Shankara, and all of them accept the authority of the Upanishads. Every school builds on the same three foundations (prasthanas): the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras of Vyasa and the Gita. So 'Vedanta' should not mean Advaita alone. Part of this section matches his Lahore lecture 'The Vedanta' (12 November 1897).
• The Smritis — Other Scriptures — Why different sects: the Smritis, the law books, rank below the Vedas and change with the age; if a Smriti contradicts the Vedanta, it is to be set aside. The Puranas teach philosophy through stories of saints and kings for ordinary people, and the Tantras are noted briefly. With such a vast literature, he says, many sects are natural; what matters are the principles they share.
• The theory of creation — Brahman — The Law of Karma: creation is better called 'projection'. The universe has no absolute beginning but passes through endless cycles of manifestation and rest. Brahman is the eternal, pure, all-knowing cause. Inequality among beings is not God's partiality but the result of their own past actions. Karma makes each person responsible for his or her own condition, and therefore free to change it.
• The soul — Mukti or Freedom: every soul is beginningless, immortal and potentially perfect, and the same soul lives in every being, from the smallest animal up. The Atman is distinct from the mind and body. Heavens are temporary, and even the gods are souls in higher positions. The real goal is mukti, freedom from all bondage, reached through knowledge and love of God. These sections, too, come mainly from the Jaffna lecture.
• Life after death: the Upanishadic teaching of the two paths after death, the way of the gods and the way of the ancestors, leads to Vedanta's conclusion that anything with name and form, including heaven, is transient. This passage comes from 'Practical Vedanta, Part II', a lecture he gave in London.
• Universalism — Image worship: these sections are taken from his Chicago 'Paper on Hinduism', read on 19 September 1893. Every religion is a journey of different people towards the same goal, like the same light shining through glasses of different colours. Image worship is not polytheism but the use of symbols as aids to concentration, a stage that a growing soul may pass through but need not condemn.
• Guru — Divine Incarnation: spiritual awakening cannot come from books alone; it needs the living touch of a qualified teacher and a ready student. Above ordinary teachers stand the incarnations of God, through whom alone, he argues, human beings can truly conceive the Divine. The Gita's verses on the avatar and a saying of Sri Ramakrishna close the section. These passages come from his book Bhakti-Yoga, from the chapters 'The Need of Guru' and 'Incarnate Teachers and Incarnation'.
• Yoga, the means — Raja-Yoga — Karma-Yoga — Bhakti-Yoga — Jnana-Yoga — The Goal: a complete religion must serve four kinds of people, the active, the emotional, the mystical and the philosophical. Raja-yoga is control of the mind through concentration, and it never asks anyone to give up reason; Karma-yoga is work without attachment; Bhakti-yoga is love of God for its own sake; Jnana-yoga is the search for the one Reality, told through the Upanishadic parable of two birds on one tree. The book ends with the claim that religion is realisation, not doctrine. This section comes mainly from his lecture 'The Ideal of a Universal Religion'.

Key arguments

Hinduism as Vedanta. The booklet presents the Upanishads, read through the three prasthanas, as the common ground of all Hindu schools. This is why Vivekananda prefers 'Vedantist' to 'Hindu', a name he regarded as merely geographical.

Unity behind variety. Dualist, qualified non-dualist and non-dualist schools, image worship and philosophy, ritual and meditation are presented as stages and paths suited to different temperaments, not as rivals.

Responsibility and freedom. Through the law of karma and the doctrine of the perfect soul, the booklet stresses human dignity and self-reliance: each person is the cause of his or her own present condition and can shape the future.

Respect for other religions. The Chicago passages argue that Hindu thought holds that holiness is found beyond its own boundaries, and that no religion has a monopoly on salvation.

Religion as experience. From the guru to the four yogas, the stress falls on practice and realisation rather than belief or intellectual assent.

In the author's words

To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth.

Each one of us is the maker of his own fate. This law knocks on the head at once all doctrines of predestination and fate and gives us the only means of reconciliation between God and man.

Reception and criticism

Within the Ramakrishna movement and far beyond it, Essentials of Hinduism has served for decades as a pocket introduction. Its appeal lies in Vivekananda's direct, confident style and in a wide-ranging but short account that moves from scripture and philosophy to everyday worship and the paths of yoga. For many readers, in India and abroad, it offers a version of Hinduism that is rational, tolerant and centred on spiritual experience.

The picture of Hinduism it presents has also been debated. The German Indologist Paul Hacker described the thought of Vivekananda and similar reformers as 'Neo-Hinduism', arguing that it reshaped tradition in response to Western ideas. The anthropologist Agehananda Bharati, in 'The Hindu Renaissance and its Apologetic Patterns' (1970), criticised what he saw as an apologetic tendency in modern Hindu reformers. Anantanand Rambachan, in The Limits of Scripture (1994), argued that Vivekananda gave personal experience an authority that classical Advaita reserved for the Vedas. Other scholars note that making Vedanta the essence of Hinduism gives less weight to ritual, regional devotional traditions and the lived religion of many Hindus. Admirers reply that Vivekananda was presenting a living tradition to a modern audience, not writing history, and that his inclusive Vedanta gives a place to every one of those forms.

A further point concerns the booklet itself. Because the passages are joined into a continuous text without references, readers cannot easily see that they come from different lectures given to different audiences between 1893 and 1897. In at least one place the wording has been lightly adjusted: the Complete Works reads 'my ideal of religion' where the booklet has 'the ideal of religion'. Readers who want the full argument should turn to the original lectures.

Where to read it

The booklet is published by Advaita Ashrama (Kolkata) and sold through its online shop and Ramakrishna Math and Mission bookstalls; an e-book edition is also listed by the publisher. A scan of the 1937 Mayavati edition is held in the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts collection and is available through the Internet Archive. All the source lectures are free in the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda on Wikisource and in the Advaita Ashrama edition of the Complete Works.

Read more on this site

• Swami VivekanandaGreat Lives of Bharat
• Sri RamakrishnaGreat Lives of Bharat
• Lectures from Colombo to AlmoraSource of the Jaffna and Lahore lectures
• Bhagavad Gita — all 18 chaptersOne of the three prasthanas
• Bhagavad Gita 4.7The avatar verse quoted in the booklet
• Yoga, Pranayama and MeditationTraditional guides

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