By James M. Rochford

Hinduism is a very ancient religion. Hopfe writes, “Perhaps the oldest and most complex of all the religions of the world is Hinduism.”[1] While other major religions can usually be traced back to a founder, Hopfe writes, “Hinduism had no one identifiable founder… There has never been one whose teachings became the wellspring of all later Hindu thought.”[2] Many people wonder: If Hinduism didn’t have an official founder, then how did it originate?

Hinduism arose from Aryan conquerors from Persia, who took over the people of India in the second millennium B.C. When this happened, their two religions mixed. The term Aryan is Sanskrit for “the noble ones.”[3]

Aryanianism (sometimes called Brahmanism) had a peculiar form of worship. For a full year, a ceremonial horse was decorated, followed, and then eventually killed—strangled to death by the Aryan priest. At this point, the people would cover the horse with a blanket. Carmody and Carmody write, “The most important queen then slipped under the blanket to have (simulated?) sexual intercourse with the horse, while the other queens and the priests shouted obscene encouragements. After this, participants ate the horse in a ritual meal. The entire ceremony fits the pattern of ancient celebrations of the new year, which often involved sacrifices and orgies designed to renew the world’s fertility.”^[4] Lewis Hopfe writes, “At that time a great many other animals were sacrificed to the gods. The great holocaust included animals of all types, ranging from the bee to the elephant, and sometimes involved more than six hundred animals.”[5]

Early Hindus drank soma in their ritual practices. Hopfe writes, “Another liquid apparently used as a libation was the juice of the sacred soma plant. The exact identification of the soma plant is lost to the modern world… There are those who suggest that the original soma may have been some form of mushroom or other plant that produced hallucinations.”[6]