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Religion in India is characterised by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. Throughout India's history, religion has been an important part of the country's culture and the Indian subcontinent is the birthplace of four of the world's major religions, namely, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, which are collectively known as native Indian religions or Dharmic religions and ...
South Asia was primarily Hindu in ancient times. Buddhism appeared around 500 BCE. [10]Christianity and Islam made an appearance in Kerala during this time period; Saint Thomas is believed to have travelled to Kerala soon after the death of Jesus and converted some people, [11] while the first mosque to be built in India was built during the Islamic prophet Muhammad's lifetime in Kerala. [12]
Islam is India's second-largest religion, with 14.2% of the country's population, or approximately 172.2 million people, identifying as adherents of Islam in a 2011 census. [7] India also has the third-largest number of Muslims in the world. [8] [9] The majority of India's Muslims are Sunni, with Shia making up around 15% of the Muslim ...
Indian religions, sometimes also termed Dharmic religions or Indic religions, are the religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent. These religions, which include Buddhism , Hinduism , Jainism , and Sikhism , [ web 1 ] [ note 1 ] are also classified as Eastern religions .
Some scholars believe that the Dravidian religion was a belief system unique to the Neolithic people of South Asia before the origin of Indo-Aryan languages. Pope believes that in the pre-historic period the Dravidian religion was a precursor to Shaivism and Shaktism [ 13 ] while John B. Magee was of the view that native Dravidian religion ...
Early and influential work in the area that set the trend for Hindu interpretations of archaeological evidence from the Harappan sites was that of John Marshall, [8] who in 1931 identified the following as prominent features of the Indus religion: a Great Male God and a Mother Goddess; deification or veneration of animals and plants; a symbolic representation of the phallus and vulva; and, use ...
According to the 2011 census of India, about 7.9 million (7,937,734) out of 1.21 billion people did not adhere to any of the subcontinent's main religious communities of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, or Jainism.
Hinduism, in particular Vaishnavism and Shaivism, was the predominant religion in ancient Tamilakam. The Sangam period in Tamilakam (c. 600 BCE–300 CE) was characterized by the coexistence of many denominations and religions: Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Ajivika and later joined by Buddhism and Jainism alongside the folk religion of the Tamil people.