RE: Hello soulcalm17
July 14, 2024 at 2:29 am
(This post was last modified: July 14, 2024 at 2:33 am by Belacqua.)
(July 14, 2024 at 12:00 am)soulcalm17 Wrote: So I still conclude that in Hindu, monotheism changed to the pantheism by it's followers.
It occurs to me that one of the problems English speakers have with the issue is simply the translation of the word "god."
In India, as I understand it, Brahman is omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, impassible, without extension or location, etc. etc. That is, it has all the attributes of the Christian God. (With differences too, but if we were to speak of a Hindu God, it would be Brahman.)
Then there are many other beings which are not human. These get translated into English as "gods," though of course in the original languages they are called by different names. Devas, asuras, rakshasas, pretas, pisachas, vitalas, nagas, yakshas, gandharvas, and others -- all of which my computer spell-check warns me about. Calling Brahman "God" and all of these other beings "gods" implies a similarity which isn't there in the original.
I've often felt this about Japanese kami as well. These are usually translated as "gods," but are fundamentally different from the Christian God -- to the point where using the same word is misleading. For example, they have location but no extension, are not omniscient, and have only very limited influence over the world. They are certainly unrelated to anything like a Ground of Being.
In Europe it was long believed that there is a great range of beings on the hierarchy between God and humans, with a variety of abilities and powers. Angels, obviously, who have location but not extension. But also all kinds of spirits and genius loci and others which may have been holdovers from pre-Christian times, but were nonetheless widely believed in. Fortunately these were called by different names, never called "gods," as the spirits in the Indian pantheon were.
As I said before, I don't know enough about the development of Indian thought to know whether belief in something like Brahman pre-dated belief in the various devas, etc. etc. So I don't know if your thesis here is correct or not. But I do think the language we use pushes us toward more of a polytheistic view than is perhaps warranted.
Also, there is the question of what we call it when a single god manifests itself in different figurations. One god (or God) can appear in different forms at different times. This is true in the more esoteric types of Buddhism, where we may speak of different apparitions, but the different characters are really different ways the one deity shows itself. That might appear to be polytheism, but if there is really only one deity behind all the characters, then it's mono.