The Evolution of Religion, Part I

      Long before the birth of civilizations, humans had been respecting and fearing the powers of nature. Being closer to the nature than today's man, natural forces affected them deeply. As time passed, civilizations developed and man started living at one place in groups rather than wandering in the wild for food and shelter. As human life settled and man started getting more time from farming and other everyday activities, he had time to ponder upon his beliefs and thoughts. He personified the forces of nature and started worshiping them. That was when the concept of 'God' was born. 

    The ancient Egyptians were the first to deify the natural entities. Their major God was Amun-Ra i.e. the Sun. Ancient Egyptians realized that Sun was the source of energy which fed them and with an obvious reason, they started worshiping the sun in the personified form as Amun-Ra. Amun-Ra is depicted in paintings of ancient Egypt with the head of a hawk and the sun as crown over the head. The river Nile used to provide copious amount of water for Egypt's crops in the season of flood. The agrarian economy of ancient Egypt flourished because of the blessings of the God Hapy and the Pharaoh (the King) who were thought to control the annual flooding of Nile.

Isis and Ra

   

        Isis was the goddess of motherhood, magic and fertility. Her worship in the ancient Egypt was so strong that it spread though the Greek and Roman world as well. It continued till the suppression of paganism in the Christian era. Egyptians believed in life after death. They built colossus pyramids for their Pharaohs who were considered gods. Pharaohs were buried in these pyramids to make their journey to the afterlife easy and unhindered. Ancient Egyptians continued their worship of many gods until their civilization came to a slow end under the threats of Greek and Persian invasions.

         When the river Nile watched the slow death of Egyptian civilization, a new culture was flourishing on the Greek islands and around the Mediterranean sea. The Greeks on the same lines of Egyptians followed a religion of polytheism. They had multiple gods who controlled various forces of nature and other important entities of Greeks. Ancient Greeks believed in a timeline starting with the Golden age when titans ruled the universe. Cronus was the king of titans whose three sons dethroned him and Zeus  being one of them claimed the throne deceiving his brother Hades to rule over the underworld and live there. Poseidon, the other son of Cronus, controlled the sea and earthquakes. Gods, sons of the titans, eventually started to reign over the universe under their influence.

Zeus

Poseidon

Hermes

       According to Greek mythology, Zeus ended up as the king of the gods and ruled from the mount Olympus where the thirteen Olympian gods lived. Zeus is always shown with a lightening bolt as his weapon. He is considered analogous to the ancient Indian god Indra who also happens to have the same weapon and he ruled from the throne in heaven being the King of Gods. Many ancient Greek gods are analogous to ancient Indian gods. Hermes, the messenger of gods in Greek mythology is a counterpart of Narada in Indian mythological stories. Many other sources betoken the same origin of these two civilizations. They could be two branches of early Proto-Indo-European civilization. Proto-Indo-European religion is considered to have had a similar mythology, the people being polytheist in the ancient times. 

Varuna

        Ancient Indians also worshiped the powers of nature in the time of Rigveda. Hymns from Rigveda are identified as chants and prayers to personified powers such as rain (Varuna) and fire (Agni). But as Indians came into the post vedic times, their deities changed. No more they worshiped these powers than the post vedic gods. The age of Puranas brought a new range of deities through the new literature that was being written by ancient saints and rishis. Population of ancient India became compulsive towards the worship of these gods on the same lines of Greeks and other branches of the Proto-Indo-European tree.

       Over the time, a general concept of worshiping and respecting natural powers and forces now evolved into a very different and phenomenal concept of worshiping human-like deities. People started fearing the gods and relating the uncommon calamities of nature to the wrath of these gods. Gods needed to be pleased with prayers and with cruel sacrifices of animals and sometimes even humans. Irrelevant rituals and customary practices took the place of pure hearted respect towards the nature, the only force that created us. The sheer might and power of human imagination took him to such a level that bonded him in the fears of strange powers beyond his comprehension. The pure prehistoric love  and  respect towards the nature now altered to become a "Religion."

to be continued...