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While my info is limited since I'm not a Hindu, I will try say
few words: Hindu has its "holy scriptures" - Vedas (oldest, seems
they are something like prayers books), Upanishads (they explain
many things from Vedas, and usually take of form of dialogue in
which one person teaches the second), Brahma Sutras, Bhagavad-Gita
(describes fragment of Mahabharata, and is classified as one of
Upanishads, has their usual form - it is dialogue between Arjuna,
who commands an army, and Krishna, who is incarnation of Vishnu,
one of Hindu gods; the BG is one of most important for majority
of Hindu religions - note it is not one religion, it is bunch of
religions which have most elements common, but almost no common
to all of them). Seems unlike Christianity or Islam scriptures
assumed to be holy are much less appreciated by Hindu-s.
And I noticed - although it is limited to the few Hindu religions
I know something about them more deeply - they interpret their
scriptures in a way it is hard to find any correlation between
an original scripture and its interpretation (an example can be
Praphupada's interpretation of the BG, in which I examined detaily
more than a chapter and found it is very far from original) - it
is very unlikely Islam, which wants Quran to be read in original
language whenever possible, and even Christianity, which attempts
to make all Bible translations as close to original as possible.
Therefore, reading Hindu holy books will not tell you much about
what these Hindu religions are, you need read much more.
Of course, my view is based on few examples only, and maybe I am
wrong, maybe I read texts of some sect far from Hindu mainstream.
Some book about religions I have here says something about Hindu
religions: they claim unity, but when there was a lecture of some
Hindu about the unity (it was about Hindu religion as universal
and tolerant), and one of listeners asked "was the unity expessed
in any way during thousands years of Hindu history?" the answer
was "no". Yet another Hindu religion property the book sais about
is called "inclusivism" - it is that they claim to be followers
of something to utilize its authority, but sometimes continuation
is reduced to the claim of continuation only. I also have seen
claims: "all religions are in their essence Hindu, they all teach
people how to become perfect", "Christianity is really Hinduism",
which seem well fit the "inclusivism" statement in the book.
(the book is "Die funf grossen Weltreligionen" = The Five Great
Religions of the World, by Emma Brunner-Traut, original printed
by Herderbucherei in Freiburg in 1977, I used Polish translation)
Yet another thing you maybe noticed in this group: a statement
"all path are true" (proclaimed by Swami Vivekananda century ago).
Jerzy
PS: I originally wrote it as e-mail, but finally decided to send
it to newsgroup, too, for others to be able to correct my
errors if there are any - my view on Hindu is via few points
I know and others people here surely have much wider horizon.
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