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7. PURANAS, TEMPLES AND THEIR DATES
"But religion has to extend beyond realisation and cater to the emotional needs of the lesser category of humanity. No historian of philosophy, to our knowledge, has been able to get over the prejudice that all religious thought subsequent to the Vedas and Upanishads, and apart from the later systematic Vedanta of the Darsana school, is a kind of trash, or, at best, a concession to the weakness of the popular mind."
A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India by Swami Krishnananda
But the question still remains, What made the step from the old Indian religions to the modern Hinduism. From early monotheism how did it degenerate into polytheism and the elaborate system of Puranas? For this we need to look into the religious events that transpired between the 3rd C BC and 3rd C AD.
I leave this quote without comments. Check the dates that are indicated. http://www.geocities.com/rigvedsamhita/bhagwat.htm As we can see from the above verses, Krishna-bhakti is older than the Vaishanacharyas, and dates back to the Rig Veda itself. We should also note of Shankaracharya (500BCE), and his 'BhajaGovindam', as well as Gita and Mahabharata, which note of Krishna-bhakti before the advent of the Guptas (c.300BCE). It was Shankara's influence that, under the Guptas (300BCE), the Greeks such as Heliodorus, become devotees of Krishna, through Bhajagovindam etc. and Bhagawata.
# The Bhagawata Purana has been placed at several dates by scholars, ranging from 3000BCE (Traditional), to 700BCE, 400BCE, 500AD, 800AD and even as late as 1000AD.
# Krishna's traditional date is around 3180BCE, and his death (3102BCE) marks the end of the Vedic Era, when the Vedas, Upanishads and Puranas were re-written for Kali-Yuga minds and the Tantra-Shastra or 'Agama' literature began, according to these dates, from older Vidyas or Shastras (Upavedas, Vidyas and Sutras etc.) from Vedic eras.
Now, this seems about correct, as the Indus Cities were all rebuilt around 3000BCE-2500BCE, because of calamities around 3000BCE, and again in 1900BCE, which marks the end of the Vedic period.
# To this, we can also include NS Rajaram, who deciphered the Indus script, and in his 'Search for the Historical Krishna', shows much evidence of Krishna at 3000BCE date is correct, and he correlates evidences from Mahabharata-era names in the Shastras and also on Indus seals.
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