O
openmind77
Guest
Whatever you say Mr Zachary
(although personally, I think they are exactly the same)
- Status
(although personally, I think they are exactly the same)
Z
Zachary
Guest
So go ahead. How are they the same.Whatever you say Mr Zachary
O
openmind77
Guest
Sorry, I don’t want to derail this thread to discuss my theories of equivalence between the Christian Trinity and Hindu Trinity (but you can open another thread if you are interested or send me a private message).
Z
Zachary
Guest
Too late for that. Nice try playing innocent with your hand in the cookie jar.
P
Philomath
Guest
The Trimurti Is not equivalent with the Trinity.
O
openmind77
Guest
As you please Mr Philomath, although I think it is. But lets not use this thread for that discussion
P
Philomath
Guest
Ok then
J
Jcc1960
Guest
Actually, I think the OP did say who Krishna is to him.We’ve gotten this far and I still don’t see anyone explaining who exactly Krishna is.
Krishna first appears as a character in the Indian epic Mahabharata.
But I thank you for the history lesson. I find it fascinating, but I believe there are many more discoveries to be made, as India is so ancient and complex. Recent scholarship places the events recorded in the Mahabharata as occurring 5000 years ago, one piece of evidence for that is the alignment of stars mentioned which modern astronomy can prove would not occur in the sky 3000 years ago, but did appear 5000 years ago, so perhaps Krishna actually predates the Aryan migration into India. Hindu scriptures such as the Vedas and Upanishads that we have today were composed more recently than that, as you noted, but certainly there was a long and ancient oral tradition before anything was written down. I would argue that the Book of Genesis is like that as well, mostly oral tradition that was passed down for generations, but still it is the word of God.
If you want to understand who Krishna is, in my opinion, you can look at the reverence shown by His devotees, how He is portrayed in scripture, including how He described Himself. In other words, the same measure Christians have with Jesus, or Baha’is have with Baha’u’llah,
P
patrick457
Guest
The thing about the Hindu ‘scriptures’ is that Hindus have traditionally ascribed great antiquity to them: thousands to tens of thousands (even millions?) of years. The Vedas in particular are regarded as apauruṣeya or śruti, not revealed by human agency - “that which was heard,” as opposed to smriti “that which was remembered” (which is what texts like the Ramayana or the Mahabharata or the Laws of Manu are considered to be.)
I’ll admit that being a non-Hindu, I don’t exactly believe in these supposed ‘discoveries’ - archaeoastronomy in particular isn’t a totally exact science and could be (and was) subject to some misuse. (Heck, I don’t even believe Christians who claim to have found stuff like the Ark of the Covenant or Noah’s Ark, so it goes both ways.) As such I don’t care about whether the events in the Mahabharata or the Ramayana really happened or when they happened - I find the main story and the lessons to be more important. To be honest sometimes I think that perhaps we Christians are to blame for starting this craze to find material evidence ‘proving’ the historicity of our respective scriptures.
P.S. I think you’ll find that there are people who are using this supposed very early date of the Mahabharata as evidence that there was no Indo-Aryan migration at all - that the Indo-Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, or even that (in a more extreme view) the Indo-European language family originated there, which is admittedly a sensitive and a complicated issue since it is somewhat tied to Hindu nationalism. IMHO the thing with India is, as you mention, it is so ancient and complex - then politics and all that stuff makes it difficult to conduct proper study.
- Status