Original subtitles

[ Soft music plays ]

♪♪

-The Indus River gave its name to India,

and along its banks are the sites of some

of the earliest urban settlements on earth.

Though the subcontinent was the birthplace of many

of the world's great religions,

excavations of these cities have uncovered no evidence

of any organised religious practices.

♪♪

But in the last 2,000 years, a culture of religious tolerance

developed amongst the many faiths of these lands.

Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism all originated here,

and the Mughal conquerors built their Islamic mosques

alongside Hindu temples.

♪♪

In 1582, when Europe was in the grip

of almost continuous religious conflict

between Christian sects,

the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great

exhorted his philosophers to seek a way

for all religions in his empire to coexist.

Even now, Hinduism still reflects that.

It has changed and adapted to circumstance.

Its followers welcome and absorb customs and beliefs

from other faiths.

So today it's the biggest faith in India

and the third-largest in the world.

The temples constructed to nurture this faith

are some of the greatest architectural treasures

in India and in this last programme,

we are in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

This is where Hindu temple culture reached its zenith,

and there's no better place to understand

the story of these remarkable buildings.

♪♪

[ Up-tempo music plays ]

♪♪

India is a country of over a billion people,

and the Hindu majority understand

and interpret their existence

in terms of their relationship with the divine.

♪♪

Their faith, a complex synthesis of many ancient beliefs,

is inseparable from their everyday lives.

The sacred and the profane are inextricably entwined.

♪♪

Even some of its most ardent followers will tell you

that Hinduism is not a religion but a cultural phenomenon.

[ Soft South Asian music plays ]

The word "Hindu" is also derived from the mighty Indus river.

Its followers regard the world in which we live as illusory.

The goal of life is to break through this illusion

and discover the reality beyond.

The locus for this quest is the temple.

♪♪

The Hindu temple is where the divide between illusion

and reality is at its most porous,

where the opportunity to achieve darshan,

a vision of the divine, is most possible.

Every community in India, great or small,

will have its own temple,

the centre of its social and spiritual life.

And these places have fostered

the greatest flowering of Hindu artistic expression.

♪♪

Temples are remarkable works of art in their own right,

but they have also been the cradle of creativity

in sculpture, poetry, song, and dance --

the very heart of a vibrant culture

that is still beating as strongly as ever.

♪♪

♪♪

Descending from the arid Deccan plateau,

the flat and forested landscape of southern India

is very different to the north.

This is a land apart -- ethnically

and culturally distinct, and with a separate history.

Even the Mughal conquest did not reach this far south.

In the 6th century, a dynasty known as the Pallavas

came to power in southern India.

Their empire thrived on trade, and the town of Mahabalipuram,

on the Coromandel Coast, was their principal port.

♪♪

Fishing is now the mainstay of this coast,

part of the modern state of Tamil Nadu.

But in a golden age in the 7th and 8th centuries,

the Pallava kings turned Mahabalipuram

into an artisan laboratory for the craft of stone carving

and it now has World Heritage status.

♪♪

Beached like a petrified ship to the south of the town

is one of the earliest free-standing stone temples

in India, the Shore Temple.

♪♪

When this temple was built,

many of the elements of temple design

had already become standardised,

but the origins of this architectural form

are not buildings at all.

♪♪

A few hundred yards inland from the Shore Temple

is a shrine from the start of the Pallava period

that helps us appreciate

why these buildings evolved in the way they did.

Like many caves and natural rock formations in India,

an opening in this granite overhang

has been enlarged and shaped over many generations

to provide a site to worship local gods.

♪♪

These shrines could have been

as simple as a clearing in the forest,

a source of spring water, or, as in this case, a cave.

What they all shared was a setting

where the natural energy of the earth

seemed to manifest itself.

This remarkable rock architecture

is 1,400 years old,

and the men who carved it were trying to harness

the spirit of the stone from which it is formed.

These beams mimic timber cross-members,

and the whole structure

was formed in imitation of wooden temples.

The columns appear to be holding the roof up,

but it is all made from the living rock.

♪♪

Inside is a small, dark womb-like chamber

where very little natural light penetrates,

and this is regarded as the most sacred part of the temple,

the sanctum.

On the back wall is a carved panel

which tells us that this temple is dedicated to Shiva,

shown here with his consort, Parvati.

On the side wall is a panel showing Vishnu,

reclining on the primordial waters.

Shiva and Vishnu are two of the principle gods of Hinduism.

As Hinduism evolved, here in southern India,

Shiva became the more popular deity,

while in the north, Vishnu is more common,

but both are aspects of the divine.

At the time these cave temples were made,

by far the most popular faith in India was Buddhism,

and the people who worshipped here

would have been most surprised to discover

they would one day be regarded

as part of an organised religion called Hinduism.

♪♪

The earliest animist practices saw the spirit of the earth

and its power manifest in all natural things.

Despite its selection of recognisable Hindu deities,

this isolated rural shrine in a forest clearing

has a powerful sense of mystery.

When it was first venerated by the local villagers,

it would have had little to do with Shiva.

The many hundreds of clay horses

gently decaying in the undergrowth

tell us that this shrine is dedicated to Ayyanar,

a deity who protects rural villages

and is almost exclusively found in Tamil Nadu.

He rides around on horseback,

fighting the demons of the forest.

The inspiration for this holy place

was spiritual rather than religious --

a potent nexus for the essence of the forest.

♪♪

A similar sense of the power of natural forces

is evident by the shore at Mahabalipuram.

Set back from the sea, we find the next phase

in the development of the Pallava stone carvers.

♪♪

A row of rocky outcrops and boulders

allowed them to work on a relatively modest scale

to try out some of their ideas for rock-cut temples.

♪♪

These are the rathas,

the first free-standing rock-cut temples

in Indian architecture,

and they are completely without precedent.

♪♪

The rathas are not strictly temples,

because they were never finished,

but they functioned as an aesthetic playground

for the Pallava kings.

They're extremely architecturally diverse

for the 7th century,

each one trying out different shapes and layouts

and with a rich variety of ornamentation.

The smaller outcrops were used to create animals

and other mythical figures.

♪♪

But this challenge seemed to be

one the Pallava craftsmen relished,

and it was in stone that Hindu architecture came to life.

At the four corners of this last ratha

are figures of Shiva and other gods,

with scripts in ancient Tamil carved in the masonry above.

One is thought to be the king, Narasimhavarman I,

with an inscription

that proclaims his patronage of the site.

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

♪♪

[ Birds chirping ]

♪♪

The skills developed in the Pallava times

have not been lost.

In the back alleys of the town today,

there are hundreds of stone artisans

chiselling away in ramshackle street studios,

meticulously turning stone into devotional art.

♪♪

The granite that these stonemasons are carving

is not found locally and has to be transported

from a quarry 50 kilometres away.

But what Mahabalipuram does have,

which makes it the undisputed centre of stone carving

along this coast, are the craftsmen.

The apprenticeship to become a master mason here

takes a minimum of seven years,

and in that time, every aspect of the process is covered.

The workshop even manufacture their own chisels.

There is no doubt that the modern carvers

have developed their own style.

Though they are depicting the same deities,

these figures are subtly different

from those that we see from a thousand years ago.

♪♪

As any Bollywood filmgoer will tell you,

the Indians love a good yarn.

This passion for storytelling is extravagantly indulged

at Mahabalipuram's greatest treasure,

the low-relief carving known as The Descent of the Ganges.

Carved in the early 7th century, at the same time as the rathas,

this exuberant panorama is packed with life,

spilling down the faces of two monolithic boulders,

some 43 feet high.

As far as storytelling in stone goes,

this is pretty hard to beat,

but it's also an example of inspired planning.

The sculptors have adapted a natural cleft in the rock

to represent the story of the Ganges,

whose life-giving waters are so central to the Hindu world view.

The simple version of the story is

that the mythical sage Bhagiratha is entreating Shiva

to bring the celestial river Ganga to earth.

The gods are rushing to the banks

to see this miracle, and

all the creatures of creation are watching in admiration,

including a family of life-sized elephants.

It's full of beautifully observed details

and comic allusion.

Bhagiratha is shown as a sadhu, a holy man, balanced on one leg.

But his holiness is somewhat undermined

when we see a pose imitated lower down by a cat.

♪♪

For Hindus, Ganga is personified as a goddess.

So powerful was her force, however,

that Shiva broke her descent by extending his matted locks,

lest she flood the earth.

Thus you see the union of male and female forces.

[ Birds chirping ]

A more complex alternative is that this is an episode

from the early Hindu epic tale, The Mahabharata.

The holy man is, in fact, a character called Arjuna,

standing on one leg as a penance in the hope that Shiva

will grant him an invincible weapon to destroy his enemies.

Both narratives resist complete explanation,

with equal stubbornness.

What we are seeing here is an early example

of the taste for complex ornament,

and this seething mass of deities

will eventually become a staple of temple decoration.

♪♪

For the Pallavas, their greatest moment

was the construction of the Shore Temple,

a landmark not just for their own progress as masons

but for the development of the nascent Hindu faith.

The Shore Temple marked a significant move

towards building on a monumental scale.

But whether it was an architectural masterpiece

or a simple carving on the back wall of a cave,

at the heart of any Hindu devotional building

is the shrine, the small sacred space where

the devotee experiences darshan, the presence of the divine.

♪♪

As these buildings grew in size, it became common

to mark the presence of the central shrine

with an elaborately carved tower,

known as the vimana, which stands as a marker,

very visibly proclaiming the temple's location

to the faithful.

♪♪

Though this building is a freestanding structure,

the way the rock is carved harks back to the rathas.

It is not made of regular stone blocks and mortar

but huge sections of precisely shaped granite.

♪♪

The Shore Temple shows

just how far early Hinduism had come by the 8th century.

By then, there was a group of holy men,

known as the Nayanmars, or the Hounds of Shiva.

♪♪

This pantheon of 63 mystics and philosophers,

also known as the Tamil Saints,

promoted a new kind of devotional Hinduism.

They were devotees of Shiva,

and their teaching was beginning to win a sizeable following.

-[ Singing in native language ]

-The hymns written by the saints were central to their success.

The Nayanmars are said to have sung the Buddhists out of India,

and their songs are still sung in the temples today.

-[ Singing in native language ]

♪♪

They offered a path to salvation that was open to all.

Their great attraction was

that a personal expression of devotion

was the way to become one with the divine.

Many of the rituals associated with Hinduism today,

such as the chanting of the names of the deities

and pilgrimages to holy sites,

were established by the Nayanmars.

But in a practical sense,

the goal was also to give Hinduism a popular face.

The fantastic array of gods

meant that everyone could find their own personal deity

and set them to work on behalf of their soul.

But what they were all striving towards

was a structure for Hinduism --

a way to formalise and codify the disparate rituals,

they had adopted to give it a unity and authority.

And to do that, they needed to write it all down.

♪♪

Hinduism is not a "religion of the book."

There is no central source of authority,

like the Bible or the Koran, to refer to,

to promulgate the absolute word of God,

but that doesn't mean there is any shortage of scripture.

The whole canon of Hindu philosophy

thrives on debate and spiritual enquiry,

much of it delightfully contradictory.

If you tried to collect it all together,

it would fill a myriad libraries.

What was added to this at the time of the Tamil Saints

was a far more rigorous set of instructions for the devotee,

the Agamas.

The Agamas are a set of rules to guide the Hindu devotee.

They are incredibly wide-ranging,

offering advice on temple construction,

on the intricacies of the guru-disciple relationship,

on meditations on the nature of Lord Shiva,

covering every moment of life from waking to sleeping.

♪♪

-[ Speaking native language ]

-The Agamas originated in Tamil Nadu

and are written in the ancient Tamil language.

-[ Speaking native language ]

-All 8,000 bundles are now being translated

before being photographed and digitised,

allowing them to be accessed online.

♪♪

♪♪

The Agamas now gave Hinduism a formal structure

that is still a keystone of its practice today.

In the wake of this change, we begin to see a significant

decline in the Buddhist presence in India.

Buddhism, a faith that had once counted itself

as the main religion of India, had been successfully

exported to China and across Asia,

and was now destined to disappear entirely

from the land where the Buddha was born

and where he had sat under a tree

and attained enlightenment.

Why this happened is still a matter of fierce debate.

The two religions share many central beliefs,

and there is some evidence to suggest

that Hinduism simply absorbed many adherents of Buddhism

by borrowing their ideas.

There may have been some persecution,

but there was no major conflict,

just an increasingly rapid acceptance

of the newly invigorated Hindu teaching.

-[ Speaking native language ]

♪♪

-Towards the end of the 9th century,

a new dynasty established itself in Tamil Nadu.

From their origins on the banks of the Kaveri River,

the Cholas quickly gained control of Peninsular India

and spread their influence into Sri Lanka,

ultimately becoming the principal military,

economic, and cultural force in southern Asia.

♪♪

Once established, they turned their attention

to the glorification of their new capital,

here at Thanjavur,

and they certainly left an incredible legacy.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

The Chola dynasty produced many notable kings.

One of the greatest came to the throne

at the end of the 11th century.

Raja Raja Chola was that rare combination

of empire-builder, able administrator,

and patron of the arts,

but his most tangible legacy today

is as a builder, and this is his greatest triumph.

♪♪

This building was completed in 1010,

so has not long since celebrated its 1,000th birthday.

It was started and completed in one continuous push

during the lifetime of Raja Raja Chola,

and in the immediate aftermath of the Hindu revolution

sparked by the Tamil Saints.

It's 300 years since the Shore Temple

at Mahabalipuram was built, but we can clearly see

that a great leap forward has occurred.

It sheer size speaks of a building created

for a dominant faith.

Inscriptions in ancient Tamil tell us that Raja Raja Chola

was instructed to build the temple in a dream,

but the real inspiration

was surely the architecture of power.

It is, of course, dedicated to Shiva,

and the message is clear --

Raja Raja and Lord Shiva were two sides of the same coin.

As a work of art, it established a distinctive Chola style,

both in design and ornamentation,

which was to last for the next few centuries.

The multifaceted columns and their projecting square capitals

were widely copied.

But it was the height of the central tower

over the shrine, the vimana,

and its monumental gateways, the gopurams,

that were its greatest innovations.

-[ Singing in native language ]

-The temple gopurams that Raja Raja built here

were more opulently embellished with sculpture,

and on a far impressive scale,

than anything that had been attempted before.

In the flat landscape of Tamil Nadu,

these mighty stone doorways dominated the view,

dramatically announcing the presence

of this colossal building.

So we're entering through the great stone gopuram

of Raja Raja. -Yeah.

-Dr. Nagaswamy was formerly the Director

of the Archaeological Survey of India

and took a particular interest in this building.

He probably knows more about its construction

than Raja Raja Chola ever did, starting with

the very first marker peg the builders set in the earth.

-When the sun rises, the shadow will be thrown

on the western side. That will be marked.

And then on the same day, when the sun sets,

they draw the central line -- exact central line.

-The central axis is the basis of the sacred geometry

of the temple. Along this line,

the location of the main shrine is determined.

And this point directly below the finial on the central tower,

the vimana, becomes the focus

from which the entire complex is plotted.

[ Birds chirping ]

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-Now in this plan,

you see the central vimana, or the main tower...

-And the inner sanctum.

-Now this is exactly in the centre of this outer square.

-Sure.

-This outer square, which we call the back square,

is the original cosmic diagram on which it is laid out...

-Yeah. -...and then that is doubled.

-In many ways, Raja Raja Chola was only doing

what had been done before, on a monumental scale.

The vimana is only a few feet shorter than Westminster Abbey.

But Raja Raja couldn't just do as he pleased here.

He was bound by the rules laid down in the Agamas.

-They prescribe

that you must first prepare the measuring scale.

-So, what are the measurements of this based on?

-The central finger of the builder Raja Raja Chola.

-I imagine it would take

quite a few multiples of Raja Raja's middle finger

to reach 216 feet to the top of the vimana here,

but he seemed to have his finger in every aspect of the temple.

-This inscription, which says that the King Raja Raja

covered the entire tall vimana at the back with gold.

Tower is called Maha Meru. -Maha Meru.

-"Maha Meru" means "the golden mountain beyond the Himalayas,"

which is a mythical mountain. -Sure.

-But that was the place where Shiva is said to reside.

-Yep. Shiva's mountain abode.

-Yeah.

-The inscriptions are extraordinarily comprehensive.

Just like the Tamil Saints who preceded him,

Raja Raja was codifying Hinduism,

recording the operational practices of his temple.

-Every detail, who is responsible,

how much money he was given, for what purpose.

And then he says, at the end, that so long as the sun

and the moon lasts, this gift must be protected.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-The rules on temple-building which are laid down

in the Agamas were followed by Raja Raja Chola

when he came to build his temple.

But though he was a man of refined aesthetic taste,

he was also an able administrator.

Raja Raja created a multilayered system of government

in which the temple was the central authority

and the largest employer, with a vast permanent workforce

that included priests and ceremonial officers,

financiers, maintenance teams, cooks, and kitchen staff,

but also the most talented youngsters

in the arts of poetry, singing, and dance.

♪♪

But beyond its function as a community centre,

workplace, and school,

the primary purpose of a temple is spiritual,

and right at its centre is the shrine of the main deity,

where the devotees come to receive darshan.

♪♪

This is the route of circumambulation,

and it leads us to a powerful image at the heart of Hinduism.

♪♪

We move from profane to sacred space

as we approach the central shrine.

In this most potent place

is kept a phallic symbol, the lingam.

The lingam is a smooth column of stone

rising out of a circular base that represents the female.

It represents the presence of Shiva,

and to gaze on it is to receive darshan.

The room where it is kept is the direct descendant

of the recess in the back of the cave

that we saw back in Mahabalipuram.

The Nayanmars' concept of supreme personal devotion

to a god like Shiva, meant that you travelled

together on your journey through life.

But even with Shiva's guidance,

where your journey led you was largely up to you.

Reincarnation is a central tenet of all the religions

that originate in India,

and your behaviour during this life

will determine how you return in the next.

♪♪

In pursuit of that supreme challenge,

we can see how the form of this remarkable building evolved,

channelling worshippers towards the central shrine

and the presence of the divine.

It's a long way from a forest clearing.

By the time it was finished, the basic precepts

of Hindu worship were set in stone,

but though this building was

the peak of Chola artistic achievement,

their lasting legacy was not in granite at all.

[ Hammering on metal ]

It was in bronze that the Chola craftsmen

established their artistic heritage,

creating beautiful works of sculpture

that are still being replicated today.

Just like the stone masons in Mahabalipuram,

the main subjects for the bronze sculptures made here

are likenesses of the Hindu deities.

♪♪

Like the stone Shiva lingam in the temple shrine,

this is another manifestation of Shiva.

Known as the Nataraja, this is an avatar,

originally a Hindu word for an incarnation of the deity

when they descend to the earth.

In this form, Shiva is the cosmic dancer,

creating the universe

while stamping down the dwarf of ignorance.

These bronze deities are made in every size,

from the largest temple figures

to the smallest domestic gods for a bedroom shrine.

The material allows for a fluidity of movement,

softer expressions and gestures,

communicating messages of benevolence and forgiveness.

And the more beautiful and refined the bronze god is,

the more likely the spirit of the real deity is

to inhabit the sculpture.

♪♪

For centuries, the stone gods in the temple shrines

were a fixed and immovable presence,

drawing the faithful to darshan.

But the advent of portable bronze figures

meant that the deities could leave their shrines.

♪♪

This is Madurai,

one of the great temple cities of southern India.

The figure on the palanquin is, once again, Shiva.

He is being taken on an excursion around the temple,

and this ceremony shows us how devotional practices

changed in the period after the Tamil Saints.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

The bronze statue of Shiva

is hidden from our view, behind the curtains,

but for the priests carrying him,

he is very real.

He is being taken

to spend the night with his consort, Parvati,

known here by the name of one of her avatars, Meenakshi,

and the tryst will take place in her shrine.

These golden footprints represent Shiva

descending from his palanquin to enter Meenakshi's shrine.

The local legend tells us

that Shiva and Meenakshi were married in Madurai

in a ceremony performed by Vishnu,

and after a long and happy life together

as rulers of the town, they assumed divine form

and she became the deity of this temple.

♪♪

There may seem to be an element of mystical pantomime here,

but their mortal followers are being shown an activity

that they can relate to their own lives.

Shiva and Meenakshi consummate their marriage anew each night.

And at dawn, Shiva slips away, back to his own shrine.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

♪♪

Madurai is in the deep south of Tamil Nadu.

It's over 2,500 years old

and was mentioned by Greek travellers

when the paint was still wet on the Parthenon.

The sprawling complex of halls and courtyards

that make up its labyrinthine temple

cover an area the size of 25 football pitches,

and it has no less than 14 gopurams.

♪♪

The other very visible feature

is the colourful riot of sculpture on the towers.

These plaster figures proclaim to the faithful

just what an army of deities

are working away on behalf of their soul.

But the lurid choice of colours is a fairly recent addition.

♪♪

The custodians of the temple, the priestly class

who manage the building and its day-to-day affairs,

are Brahmins - the top rung of the Indian caste system.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are "untouchables,"

not considered worthy to enter the temple shrine,

but they, too, need an opportunity

to experience darshan.

♪♪

For them and for those who simply feel

they can navigate life without the guiding hand

of a Brahmin priest, there are alternatives.

In a corner of the main temple courtyard,

genuinely accessible to all,

there is a small shrine to Ganesh,

the remover of obstacles, which is extremely busy.

These worshippers are allowed to touch the deity,

to make their own offerings,

and to conduct their own personal rituals.

But by doing so, they remain

very much part of Hindu practices.

♪♪

Familiar religious images are now emerging from the temples

and becoming part of mainstream Indian life --

a process that began with the advent

of cheap colour printing in the late 19th century.

The painter Raja Ravi Varma became hugely popular

by portraying the deities in a contemporary Western style,

using oil paint.

♪♪

The performance artist Pushpamala has re-created

his familiar image of the goddess Lakshmi,

casting herself as the deity.

-Lakshmi, of course, is the goddess of wealth,

but Ravi Varma also created

this kind of fair-skinned, aristocratic ideal Indian woman.

-Mm.

Pushpamala has also made work based on a series of photographs

taken by British ethnographers in the 19th century

that sought to categorise the races of India.

These images, being regarded as scientific,

are not concerned to disguise

the darker skin of their subjects.

-In fact, the Andamanese Islander picture

comes from a very famous study,

and they were doing it in all the colonies.

And that was, in a sense, to control and understand,

so that was to kind of really, you know,

get a grasp on the world,

which was rapidly sort of expanding.

-In fact, the term "Hindu" only came into widespread use

during the British Raj,

and these religious and ethnic classifications

certainly contributed

to the rigidity of the Indian caste system.

But once these religious stratifications

had been formulated,

they became a welcome badge for those they labelled.

The temple is still the focus

for the religious life of Hindu communities,

but the younger generation are growing up in a country

where their government now wears this religious badge,

and religion is more present in everyday culture than ever.

♪♪

The intensely expressive sculptures

that cover the temple gopurams

are appearing in an unlikely new guise.

The Hindu legends are now being retold in comic art,

and graphic novels based on these ancient stories

are becoming hugely popular.

But for a group of young comic book enthusiasts,

working in a small apartment, these home-grown efforts

retelling the familiar stories of Shiva

need a bit of updating.

Here's their take

on the marriage of Shiva and Meenakshi

that inspired the night ceremony in Madurai.

But the scene has now become a mash-up

of Gotham City and Middle Earth.

-I used to read comics, you know, Superman, Batman.

I love the graphics in those comics.

Then, I read a few comics from Indian publishing houses.

The stories were good, but the graphics were

a little bit obsolete, basically.

I mean, I used to see Marvel, and then I see how much --

and I see the difference.

So I said, "Why not bring these three together,

where I have graphics which are universal,

and bring in stories which touch our Hindu legends

and bring in the art of narration from Tolkien

and make graphic novels with these three elements?"

-Although the style of the graphics

and the narration are new, for a true Hindu,

there is very little room for innovation

when it comes to the stories.

-It doesn't make any sense to deviate,

because if the story is there, existed,

a lot of people, especially the young ones

or the youth of today or the "Y" generation,

whatever you may call it, in our country and abroad,

don't know much about the story.

And the story itself is so interesting,

why do you want to deviate and rock the boat?

-As keen as these guys are

on sticking to the authentic stories,

they have some interesting ideas about Hinduism.

-Hindu was never a religion, I believe.

This is my personal view. It is a culture.

It was a way of living.

All of the answers are there in the past.

You know, children from all ages

look at the graphic novel and get attracted.

"Wow. This is such appealing art.

I love it. It's so awesome. It's so cool."

Okay, then he starts to read.

And in that whole process,

he understands the story.

That's where we come in.

♪♪

-However adroit Hinduism is

at adapting itself to the modern world,

Hindu philosophy is still difficult to reconcile

with Western notions of religious experience.

One of the most fundamental disconnects

between Eastern and Western thought

is represented by Shiva Nataraja,

and his ring of fire.

Today, in many fields,

India is leading global technological progress.

So, how does it reconcile scientific advances

with ancient myths and legends?

Victorian Christianity was severely tested

by the theories of scientists like Charles Darwin,

and many evangelical Christians still cannot accept

the scientific truth of evolution.

Hinduism, it seems, has no such issues.

Outside the CERN particle research centre in Geneva,

a Shiva Nataraja, donated by the Indian Government,

celebrates the involvement of many Indian tech companies

in the project.

Whether you call it the Large Hadron Collider

or Shiva Nataraja,

the fact that the origins of the universe

lie in a ring of cosmic energy

is just confirmation of something Hindus already knew.

♪♪

-I can be a Hindu

without having to subscribe to a particular god,

to a particular book,

or to a particular religious practice,

which means that I can be completely independent,

I can have my own view of the world,

I can have my own view of the universe,

and I can accommodate different views from different systems

and synthesise them in my mind.

♪♪

-For a Hindu, the black water,

the Indus river or the Indian Ocean,

mark the boundaries of their homeland.

In the days before mass travel,

to cross the black water and leave India

was to cease to be a Hindu,

and the rise of Hindu nationalism

has reinforced the idea

that to be Indian is to be Hindu,

and vice versa.

But Hindu nationalism is directly at odds

with its inclusive tradition.

And as India emerges as a major economic force

at the forefront of globalisation,

the role of Hinduism in its society

is becoming incendiary.

[ Fireworks crackling ]

This is the festival of Karthigai,

deep in the Tamil heartlands of southern India.

It celebrates a story from the Hindu scriptures,

which casts Lord Shiva in a very favorable light.

♪♪

The central story tells how,

in a moment of celestial competitiveness,

Shiva appeared to Vishnu and Brahma

as an endless flame of light

and challenged them to find his head and his feet.

To cut a long story short -- and it is a long story --

they fail, and Shiva remains supreme.

Like so many other elements of Hinduism,

this festival offers the devotee a bewildering array of choices.

The basic tale has become freighted with other cargo,

competing traditions that obscure the central meaning

with excess baggage.

In one tradition, the oil lamps ward off evil forces

and bring prosperity and joy.

In another, the relationship of brothers and sisters

is remembered, and siblings exchange gifts.

Yet another tale is the alignment of six stars

at this point in the year, said to represent

the six faces of Murugan, the Hindu god of war.

♪♪

The complexity that results

from this amalgamation of myth and celebration

makes it impossible to give a simple answer

to the question, "What is this festival for?"

Quite simply,

though it can mean something different to each person,

everyone can enjoy it together.

And in this simple fact, you have

the secret to Hinduism's success.

♪♪

The temples are as busy as they have ever been.

And as their traditions spill out

into mainstream Indian life once more,

their devotees are still seeking answers

to questions that are eternal.

♪♪

The many different religions

that have vied for the souls of the faithful over the centuries

have left a rich legacy in these lands.

The haunting relics of the Buddhist culture

are now just ruins,

but their beautiful devotional art

reminds us of their remarkable achievements.

♪♪

The great mosques and mausoleums of the Mughal conquest

are architectural masterpieces, venerated around the world,

and the skill of their painters and their musical heritage

are as cherished today as they have always been.

5,000 years ago, when the first great urban settlements

grew up on the banks of the Indus River,

the citizens had to devise ways of living together

in some of the world's first cities,

and they face similar problems now.

But as we know, in the Hindu worldview,

time is cyclical, not linear.

The cities of these lands today

have to find new strategies to support vast populations,

but they have a genius for coping with immense challenges.

And as they strive towards solutions,

it is perhaps some comfort to know

that they have been here before.

In the West, time marches on,

but here, what goes around comes around.

[ South Asian music plays ]

♪♪

♪♪

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