Ancient Religious Practices

I was reading a book, A history of Religious Ideas by Mircea Eliade. This book is a massive undertaking by the author and is a very detailed historical study of religion and the various religious practices from the very beginning of the human race.

It was one aspect of the book that hit me yesterday. Almost all of the ancient religions from Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Indus civilizations seemed to have had certain uniform beliefs and practices. This is despite the fact that there is no evidence of any direct connection or communication between these civilizations and so its not clear how they all came about to have these very similar practices. Unless of course all of them derived these from a prior single common source, a civilization that existed prior to the Sumerians and which had spread out to all these other areas, of which nothing is known.

The commonality appears to be the existence of multiple gods of different hierarchies often representing different domains such as the sun, wind, rains etc with the existence of a superior god. Fights and competition between gods are fairly common, gods marry humans, the praying and giving of offerings to idols who represented the gods, the building and importance of temples, the significance attached to a king who was seen to represent to gods on earth, the regular cleansing and renewal of temples, animal sacrifices, celebration of an annual harvest or new year festival signifying rebirth and refresh. All of these practices appear to be common to all these early civilizations.

The modern religious, however, such as Christianity and Islam have by their religious teachings effectively abolished these early practices. Christianity developed about 2000 years ago and Islam some1400 years ago. Both these religions preached the existence of only a single God, no idol worship and have downplayed the role and importance of temples. Buddhism, the other major religion, doesn’t believe in a god at all.

Something then hit me when I recalled my recent trip to India when I visited some temples.

All these ancient practices which were in existence some 6000 years ago are practiced in full force in South Indian religious culture.

They have multiple gods of differing levels people pray to and they also have their superior gods namely Shiva and Vishnu. They pray to idols, who signify their gods. Temples are revered and temple ceremonies play a very important role in the lives of the people. Temples are regularly cleansed and temple consecration ceremonies are very important occasions. Harvest and new year festivals are still important religious events in their lives. There was a particular temple I visited, the Alagar temple in Madurai, where animals are sacrificed outside the temple grounds to honour and give thanks to the gods and the entire family and relatives gather to then cook and consume the meat of the sacrificed animal.

I found it amazing that almost all the practices that existed more than 6000 years ago are still in existence today in full force. How did this continuity come about? Or is this something innate in humans I wonder?