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In the Indian historian DN Jha's essay "Looking for a Hindu identity", he writes: "No Indians described themselves as Hindus before the fourteenth century" and that "The British borrowed the word 'Hindu' from India, gave it a new meaning and significance, [and] reimported it into India as a reified phenomenon called Hinduism."
Hinduism is the world's third-largest religion, with approximately 1.20 billion followers, or around 15% of the global population, known as Hindus. [16] [web 2] [web 3] It is the most widely professed faith in India, [17] Nepal, Mauritius, and in Bali, Indonesia. [18]
Modern Standard Hindi, ( आधुनिक मानक हिन्दी, Ādhunik Mānak Hindī) [14] commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in Devanagari script. It is the official language of India alongside English and the lingua franca of North India.
Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in North India, Pakistan and the Deccan, and used as the official language and lingua franca in both countries. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi (written in Devanagari script and influenced by Sanskrit) and Urdu (written in Perso-Arabic script and influenced by Persian and Arabic).
Hinduism. Over the millennia of its development, Hinduism has adopted several iconic symbols, forming part of Hindu iconography, that are imbued with spiritual meaning based on either the scriptures or cultural traditions. The exact significance accorded to any of the icons varies with region, period and denomination of the followers.
The history of Hinduism covers a wide variety of related religious traditions native to the Indian subcontinent. [1] It overlaps or coincides with the development of religion in the Indian subcontinent since the Iron Age, with some of its traditions tracing back to prehistoric religions such as those of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation.
Darshan. (Indian religions) A darshana literally means a glimpse or view. In a Hindu temple, the term refers to viewing the garbhagriha (inner sanctum) of the temple, which hosts the murti (image of a god). Devotees taking darshana of the god Vishnu in the inner sanctum of the Chennakeshava Temple, Belur. In Indian religions, Darshana, also ...
Shri is an epithet of the Hindu goddesses - Lakshmi. Shri is a polite form of address equivalent to the English "Mr." or "Ms.". [7] Shri is also frequently used as an epithet of some Hindu gods, in which case it is often translated into English as Holy.