| A | B |
|---|
| ARYANS | nomadic tribes who invaded India in second millennium B.C.E. |
| ASCETICISM | denial of pleasure and comfort; seeking pain and privation in order to achieve spiritual purification |
| BRAHMAN | the highest reality; a monistic conception of deity found in the Upanishads |
| BRAHMIN | the highest caste in India, priests |
| BHAGAVAD GITA | a devotional book emphasizing duty to caste and theism |
| DUALISM | doctrine that there are two aspects to reality (e.g., the Jain doctrine that reaity is divided into SOULS and MATTER) |
| HINDUISM | the largest religion in India today |
| INDIA | country in which Hinduism and Jainism developed |
| JAIN | an ascetic, dualist, atheist denomination founded by Mahavira |
| KARMA | the doctrine that evil deeds recoil upon the doer |
| MAHAVIRA | the title given to the founder of Jainism, Nattaputta Vardhamana |
| MEDITATION | spiritual exercises used to achieve mystical states; advocated by Upanishads, Buddhism, and Jainism |
| MONISTIC | doctrine that all of reality is really only one thing |
| PANTHEISM | doctrine that everything is God, God is everything; found in Upanishads |
| TANTRISM | a northern Indian religious movement infecting Hinduism, contending that sex and alcohol lead to spiritual consciousness |
| TRANSMIGRATION | the doctrine that the soul reincarnates in other bodies after dead |
| UPANISHADS | mystical books written between 800 and 300 B.C.E. |
| VEDAS | four books written about 1000 B.C.E.; the essential canon of Hinduism |
| YOGA | physical exercises designed to achieve mystical consciousness |
