Buddhism
- Buddhism teaches that desire causes suffering and humans should overcome desire by following the Eightfold path
- The Buddha stressed that everyone could reach a state of peace called Nirvana by rejecting the sensory world and embracing spiritual discipline and after the Buddha died his followers developed different interpretations of his teachings
- New ideas of Buddhism changed it from a religion that emphasized individual discipline to a mass religion that offered salvation to all and allowed popular worship
- By the first century A.D. Buddhist divided over new doctrines, those who accepted them belonged to the Mahayana sect, those who held to the stricter original teachings belonged to the Theravada sect
- New trends in Buddhism inspired Indian art, artists carved large statues of the Buddha to worship
- Wealthy Buddhist merchants paid for the construction of stupas, mounded stone structures that were built over holy relics, and the carving of cave temples out of solid rock, artists adorned the temples with sculptures and paintings
- Buddhists walked the paths that circled around the stupas as part of meditation
Hinduism
- Hinduism is a complex polytheistic religion that blended Aryan beliefs with the many gods and cults of dverse people who proceded them
- Hinduism became remote from the people
- It developed a set of sacrifices that could only be preformed by priests, and those who weren't priests had less and less direct contact with the religion
- Hinduism changed through exposure to other cultures and the popularity of Buddhism
- A trend toward monotheism was growing although the religion embraced hundreds of gods
- People began to believe there was only one divine force in the universe and various gods represented parts of that force
- Three most important gods were Brahma who was the creator of the world, Vishnu who was the preserver of the world, and Shiva who was the destroyer of the world
- Of the three gods Vishnu and Shiva were the favorites and many people began to devote themselves to these two gods
- Hinduism's appeal grew as it evolved into a personal religion