While doing a search for what the symbols of the world religions in the Gupshup Gallery mean, I came across the following URL which described Hinduism (and the other world religions - yes, even the Zorastrians are given their due) in a nutshell (Xtreme, even the Manusmrti gets some run, enjoy) -
http://www.unification.net/ws/wsintr4.htm
Hinduism
The Hindu religious tradition defies description by any simple list of doctrines and practices. Some branches are monistic and see divinity as pervading all reality, some are largely dualistic and posit reality as the interrelation of the divine Spirit (Purusha) and primordial material nature (prakriti), some are monotheistic and revere a personal God, and still others worship the Nameless and Formless God with many names and forms. A Hindu may worship God in the form of Krishna or Shiva, or seek unity with the impersonal Brahman, yet he will regard all these as symbols for one Ultimate Reality. Whether a Vedantist who sees Reality as impersonal or a devotee of the Goddess Durga, he finds sanction for his views in the same scriptures. As it is stated in the Rig Veda: “Truth is one, and the learned call it by many names.”
If one might hazard a list of common features of Hindu faith and practice, it might include: (1) Brahman or Ultimate Reality is both personal and impersonal and appears in many forms; (2) it is accessible through a variety of paths (margas): knowledge (jnana yoga), devotion (bhakti yoga), and action (karma yoga); and (3) it is realized by those sages who have attained union or communion with that Reality. (4) On the other hand, creation and the phenomena of worldly life are temporal and partial; they conceal the total Truth and its realization. (5) Hindus further hold the doctrine of karma, which says that each thought, word, and action brings appropriate recompense, thereby upholding the moral government and ultimate justice of the cosmos; and (6) the doctrine of reincarnation, understood as a dreary round of continued suffering or a continuous series of fresh opportunities to improve one’s lot. Inequality of endowment and fortune is explained as the working out of karma and not as the result of some discrimination by God. Hindus also uphold (7) the authority of the Vedas; (8) the traditions of family and social life, with its four stages of student, householder, spiritual seeker, and ascetic who renounces all for the sake of spiritual progress and the welfare of all; (9) the four goals of life: righteousness (dharma), economic wealth (artha), pleasure (kama), and spiritual freedom (moksha); and (10) the validity and viability of the ideal social order and its attendant duties, which have degenerated into the caste system. The many sects of Hinduism, with few exceptions, share these features in common. Those Indian faiths which protested several of these features, such as Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, soon became distinguished from the Hindu fold.
Hinduism’s long tradition has produced many sacred works. The most ancient and authoritative are the revealed literature (shruti): these are the Vedas that include the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads.
The four Vedas, the Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharva Veda, have been transmitted orally from generation to generation for more than three thousand years. They are written in verse and contain hymns, ritual formulae, chants, and prayers. An exact method of traditional Vedic chanting has preserved most of the vedic hymns from corruption. Many of the Vedic hymns are addressed to deified powers of nature which are understood as manifestations of cosmic truth. Some refer to partaking of soma and the horse sacrifice, rituals that are rarely practiced by modern Hindus. Nevertheless, a proper understanding of the ancient Vedas shows them to contain all the essential elements of Hindu thought. It is those Vedic passages of eternal relevance that are excerpted in this anthology. The Brahmanas are prose amplifications of the Vedas. Two of them are quoted in this volume: the Sathapata Brahmana and the Tandya Maha Brahmana. There are 108 Upanishads, composed at various times (900 b.c. to 200 b.c.); they belong to one or another recension of the Vedas or Aranyakas. Etymologically, “upanishad” means “sitting near,” and the Upanishads record the philosophical and mystical teachings given by the ancient sages as they sat surrounded by their disciples. The commentaries of Shankara (d. 750 a.d.) highlighted eleven principal Upanishads: the Isha, Kena, Katha, Prasna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Aitareya, Taittiriya, Chandogya, Brihadaranyaka, and Svetasvatara. The Maitri Upanishad is also regarded as significant by many authorities. A few Upanishads such as the Svetasvatara may be interpreted in a predominantly monotheistic sense as teaching devotion to a personal God, but the general trend of the Upanishads is to identify Reality as supra-personal Brahman, who is “not this, not that”–beyond any particular description, and is one with the Atman or universal Self residing in the heart of each person. They teach that liberation is to realize the Atman within while transcending the ego-self that is identified with the psycho-physical organism, its actions and desires. The most widely known Hindu scripture is the Bhagavad Gita. Composed several centuries before the beginning of our era, it is but one book of the great epic the Mahabharata. However, the authority and influence of the Bhagavad Gita is such that it is usually raised to the status of an Upanishad. It has been called “India’s favorite Bible,” and with its emphasis on selfless service it was a prime source of inspiration for Mahatma Gandhi. Sharing many affinities with the older Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita sanctions several paths for realizing the highest goal of life. But it is also distinctively monotheistic, teaching that devotion (bhakti) is the supreme way to approach God and receive His grace. Other later Hindu texts are called sacred traditions (smriti), of lesser authority than the shruti. These include the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Episodes from these epics are familiar to every Indian school child, and they provide the themes of countless popular dramas and movies. The Ramayana recounts the story of Rama, who is an avatar or incarnation of Vishnu, and his wife Sita. It exalts the ideals of family life as superior to claims of rule and wealth. Rama obeys his father even though it means giving up his kingdom and dwelling in the forest. Then, when Sita is abducted by the evil demon-king Ravanna, Rama must go through many trials until he can mount an expedition to defeat Ravanna and regain his wife. Sita’s perfect virtue is manifest as she faithfully goes into exile with Rama and later preserves her chastity during the captivity under Ravanna. The Mahabharata recounts the civil war between the clan of the Kauravas, led by the evil Duryodhana and his cohort Karna, against the Pandavas who are championed by Arjuna and Krishna. Krishna is, like Rama, an avatar of Vishnu (the name used by Vaishnavas to designate the One God) under human conditions and limitations, but in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita he reveals his transcendental form to Arjuna. Throughout the epic the virtues of courage, devotion to duty, and right living are extolled. Another group of smriti texts are the collections of dharma, duty or law as it relates to members of society. The Laws of Manu is the most important of these, and we also include excerpts from the collections of Narada, Vasishtha, and Apastamba. Regarding the laws in these collections, the editors have chosen to avoid those controversial matters relating to the caste system. Despite the Vedic origins of varnashrama dharma, the degenerate caste system is probably the one feature of Hinduism which is repudiated by most modern Hindu reformers and intellectuals. This is in keeping with the aim of World Scripture, to accentuate the positive features of religion. The Puranas are medieval collections of laws, stories, and philosophy which largely reflect the teachings of older scriptures but also illustrate them with concrete stories and examples. They are enormously influential in the popular religious expressions of modern India. The most well-known of these is the Srimad Bhagavatam or Bhagavata Purana, the scripture of Krishna’s life and teachings, his childhood exploits, and his love of the adoring cowherd girls, which is central to the religion of Vaishnavite Hindus. Another Vaishnavite scripture, the Vishnu Purana, contains a prophecy about Kalki, a future avatar. The Shiva Purana, Skanda Purana, and Linga Purana are among the scriptures of Shaivism. The Garuda Purana and Matsya Purana contain descriptions of the afterlife and the effects of karma on a person’s destiny. The Markandeya Purana contains a story of a king whose compassionate attitude closely resembles that of a bodhisattva, and a description of the victory of the Goddess Durga, a popular Hindu deity. Many other Puranas exist, and more are still being written, adding to the fascinating variety of India’s religious landscape. Tantras are manuals of religious practice. Tantrism in both Hinduism and Buddhism uses yogic techniques, symbolic ritual, and the transmutation of ordinary desire in order to transcend all desires by identification with Ultimate Reality. This last feature has given Tantrism a scandalous reputation for purportedly licentious rites, but in fact all genuine Tantric practice requires as a prerequisite mastery over ordinary desires by total ascetic self-control. These texts are represented here by the Kularnava Tantra.
Hindu philosophers, saints, and poets have produced a voluminous literature which is largely beyond the scope of an anthology limited to scripture. We mention the sutras, and their commentaries laying out the six orthodox philosophical systems (darshanas): Vedanta (the Brahma Sutra of Badarayana and commentaries by Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva), Yoga (the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Purva Mimansa. These texts delve into specialized realms of philosophy; in large measure, the religious content of these systems is already covered by the Vedas and Upanishads upon which they heavily draw.
We also cannot do justice to the literature of the medieval saints who expressed their devotion to Shiva or Vishnu in dance, poems, and love songs in the vernacular languages of the many states of India. In Tamil-nadu the Nayanars adored Shiva and the Alvars sang of Vishnu: chief among them was Nammalvar who wrote of the devotee as a woman totally immersed in love with her husband Vishnu. Of Hindi poets the foremost was Kabir, whose poetry joining Hindu and Islamic Sufi concepts has become an enduring source of wisdom for all Indians; we meet some of his verses as they have been incorporated in the Sikh scriptures. Others include Tulsidas, who wrote the Hindi version of the Ramayana, and Jayadeva, whose Gita Govinda, a poem in Sanskrit describing the love of Radha and Krishna, is widely performed in temple dances. These and countless other saints continue to express the Hindu tradition in forms that are ever new.
Of these devotional movements, the Lingayats of Karnataka province in southwest India are worthy of special mention because of their distinctive beliefs and reforming spirit. The Virashaiva movement, founded by Basavanna (12th century a.d.), rejected the caste system, disputed the authority of the Vedas, opposed image-worship, and taught a personal religion of devotional monotheism that dispensed with temple and priesthood. Basavanna’s reforms have justly been compared to those of Martin Luther. His Vachanas are venerated as scripture.