Hinduism is characterised by extremely diverse beliefs and practices. In the words of
R.C. Zaehner, "it is perfectly possible to be a good Hindu whether one's personal views incline toward
monism,
monotheism,
polytheism, or even
atheism." He goes on to say that it is a religion that neither depends on the existence or non-existence of God or Gods. More broadly, Hinduism can be seen as having three more important strands: one featuring a personal Creator or Divine Being, second that emphasises an impersonal Absolute and a third that is pluralistic and non-absolute. The latter two traditions can be seen as nontheistic. Although the Vedas are broadly concerned with the completion of ritual, there are some elements that can be interpreted as either nontheistic or precursors to the later developments of the nontheistic tradition. The oldest Hindu scripture, the
Rig Veda mentions that 'There is only one god though the sages may give it various names' (1.164.46).
Max Müller termed this
henotheism, and it can be seen as indicating one, non-dual divine reality, with little emphasis on personality. The famous
Nasadiya Sukta, the 129th Hymn of the tenth and final Mandala (or chapter) of the Rig Veda, considers creation and asks "The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. "Who then knows whence it has arisen?". This can be seen to contain the intuition that there must be a single principle behind all phenomena: 'That one' (tad ekam), self-sufficient, to which distinctions cannot be applied. It is with the
Upanishads, reckoned to be written in the first millennia (coeval with the ritualistic
Brahmanas), that the Vedic emphasis on ritual was challenged. The Upanishads can be seen as the expression of new sources of power in India. Also, separate from the Upanishadic tradition were bands of wandering ascetics called Vadins whose largely nontheistic notions rejected the notion that religious knowledge was the property of the Brahmins. Many of these were
shramanas, who represented a non-Vedic tradition rooted in India's pre-Aryan history. The emphasis of the Upanishads turned to knowledge, specifically the ultimate identity of all phenomena. This is expressed in the notion of
Brahman, the key idea of the Upanishads, and much later philosophizing has been taken up with deciding whether Brahman is personal or impersonal. The understanding of the nature of Brahman as impersonal is based in the definition of it as 'ekam eva advitiyam' (Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.1) – it is one without a second and to which no substantive predicates can be attached. Further, both the
Chandogya and
Brihadaranyaka Upanishads assert that the individual
atman and the impersonal Brahman are one. The
mahāvākya statement
Tat Tvam Asi, found in the Chandogya Upanishad, can be taken to indicate this unity. The latter Upanishad uses the negative term
Neti neti to 'describe' the divine. statue in Pantanjali Yog Peeth Haridwar Classical
Samkhya,
Mimamsa, early
Vaisheshika and early
Nyaya schools of Hinduism do not accept the notion of an omnipotent creator God at all. While the Sankhya and Mimamsa schools no longer have significant followings in India, they are both influential in the development of later schools of philosophy. The Yoga of
Patanjali is the school that probably owes most to the Samkhya thought. This school is dualistic, in the sense that there is a division between 'spirit' (Sanskrit:
purusha) and 'nature' (Sanskrit:
prakṛti). It holds Samadhi or 'concentrative union' as its ultimate goal and it does not consider God's existence as either essential or necessary to achieving this. The
Bhagavad Gita, contains passages that bear a monistic reading and others that bear a theistic reading. Generally, the book as a whole has been interpreted by some who see it as containing a primarily nontheistic message, and by others who stress its theistic message. These broadly either follow after either
Sankara or
Ramanuja An example of a nontheistic passage might be "The supreme Brahman is without any beginning. That is called neither being nor non-being," which Sankara interpreted to mean that Brahman can only be talked of in terms of negation of all attributes—'Neti neti'. The
Advaita Vedanta of
Gaudapada and
Sankara rejects theism as a consequence of its insistence that Brahman is "Without attributes, indivisible, subtle, inconceivable, and without blemish, Brahman is one and without a second. There is nothing other than He." This means that it lacks properties usually associated with God such as omniscience, perfect goodness, omnipotence, and additionally is identical with the whole of reality, rather than being a causal agent or ruler of it. ==Jainism==