India's Religion
India has two major religion's, the first is Hinduism and the second is Buddhism. Buddhism began in India and spread to other places in Asia. Hinduism orgins are less clear but they are certainly related to the arrival of the Aryans. When the Aryans arrived in about 1500 B.C., the Indo-European gods entered as well. This was the start of modern Hinduism. Hinduism was and is polytheistic. That means they believe in many gods. Stories about the gods were written down in the Rid Veda and other epic poems. In this kind of Hinduism, people believed in reincarnation. Reincarnation means that people could be reborn into other bodies after they died. Hinduism people started to worry, they didn't want to be stuck in the cycle of reincarnation forever. That's when the prince Siddhartha Gautama Buddha thought of Buddhism.
Buddism people believed that they can get free of the cycle of reincarnation by being good people, by learning not to care about the things of the body and through meditation. Buddhism began in India and spread to other places in Asia. Buddhists still paid attention to the Hindu gods. People still remember Buddha, but as one of the many Hindu gods. Now most Buddhist live live as monks and nuns.
