Throughout history religion has been used as means to justify actions and to control people. The two earliest examples are Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. The time frames that will be discussed will be the reign of Cyrus, 521 to 486 BCE, and India from 1500 to 500 BCE, before the Persians had a direct effect on India. The Persian religion is thought to be Zoroastrianism or a derivative of it, called Achaemenian. (For this paper the Persian’s religion will be referred to as Zoroastrianism.) However, Cyrus did not strive to spread his religion he introduced his self into other religions as a divine figure. Hinduism is a religion whose origins are unknown but are speculated to have been initiated by the Aryan people. The development of the Caste system intertwined with the Hindu religion was an effective way of controlling the Indian populace by dividing the people into four major divisions, The Brahman Priests, The Kshatriya, Warriors, Vaisya Merchants and the Sudra Peasants. There was another class that was considered out castes they were called the Untouchables. A comparison and contrast of these two cultures will answer: how and why they used religion to ascertain their control over their general population.
Cyrus implemented his control of the populace by integrating himself into religions by portraying himself as chosen by God. This has been well documented in two areas one with the Babylon populace, with their god Murdock and in the Hebrew bible. With Murdock he used the fact that the king, Nabonidus, of Babylon was re-focusing his worship away from the god Murdock and towards Sîn. When he missed an important ritual renewing his Kingship associated with Murduck the priest of Murdock were infuriated. Cyrus caught a whiff of it...
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...mpires that came after these two and conclude that religion has been used in this sense for years long after.
Bibliography
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Works Cited
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Indian society was patriarchal, centered on villages and extended families dominated by males (Connections, Pg. 4). The villages, in which most people lived, were admini...
"From the Mahabharata." Prentice Hall Literature. Trans. R. K. Narayan. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004. 174-81. Print.
Over the years, society has come to evolve and progressively become more efficient as society’s viewpoints and perspectives on various aspects of life have also changed. However, the one aspect of life that has stayed constant has been religion. The impact of a constant religious opinion on a changing society has detrimental and benign effects on the populace of such a society.
Nicholas B Dirks. (1989). The Invention of Caste: Civil Society in Colonial India: Social Analysis. The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice. No. 25, pp. 42-52
Srimad Devi Bhagavata Purana. 3rd ed. Trans. Swami Vijnanananda. Allahabad: Allahabad Panini Office, 1922. Print.
Religion is an ever-growing idea that has no set date of origin. Throughout history religion has served as an answer to the questions that man could not resolve. The word religion is derived from the Latin word “religio” meaning restraint in collaboration with the Greek word “relegere” which means to repeat or to read again. Religion is currently defined as an organized system of beliefs and practices revolving around, or leading to, a transcendent spiritual experience. Throughout time, there has yet to be a culture that lacks a religion of some form, whether it is a branch of paganism, a mythological based religion or mono/polytheistic religion. Many religions have been forgotten due to the fact that they were ethnic religions and globalizing religions were fighting to be recognized, annihilating these ancient and ethnic religions. Some of these faiths include: Finnish Paganism, Atenism, Minoan Religion, Mithraism, Manichaeism, Vedism, Zoroastrianism, Asatru, and the Olmec Religion. Religion is an imperative part of our contemporary world but mod...
known in Northeast India in the 6th century BC. Looking back to the earliest roots,
Throughout the ancient world, religions and ideologies have developed into forms and practices that influence the very essence of civilizations. Religions could pose as a form of foundation for the beliefs, ideas, social organizations, and economic structures of a certain group of people. They provided a means of justification and form of unity between people and they helped establish and infuse new ideas into a culture. Religions were used as source to explain the misconcepted beliefs in nature and science as well as natural phenomina and it was also used to provide a source of motivation, control, and stability in a civilization.
...form into a country, a very historic and important period. During this period the decimal system of notation, great Sanskrit epics, Hindu art, and contribution to the sciences of astronomy and mathematics (Kulke, Dietmar, 59).
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