World Religions: Founders, Books and Worship Places

Every general awareness paper carries a question or two on religions, and the question is almost always a pairing: a faith with its founder, its holy book, its place of worship or its holy city. The facts are fixed, which makes this one of the few chapters a candidate can master completely. The safe way to learn it is as a single table repeated until the pairs come without thinking, and then to add the small details that separate a careless answer from a correct one, such as which Guru compiled the Guru Granth Sahib and where the Buddha preached his first sermon.

The faiths born in India

Hinduism has no single founder and is the oldest of the living religions. Its earliest scriptures are the four Vedas, the Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharvaveda, the Rigveda being the oldest; the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata follow. Its place of worship is the temple or mandir.

Buddhism was founded by Gautama Buddha, born Siddhartha at Lumbini in present-day Nepal. He attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, preached his first sermon at Sarnath near Varanasi, and died at Kushinagar, an event called the mahaparinirvana. Its canon is the Tripitaka, written in Pali and made of the Vinaya, Sutta and Abhidhamma Pitakas; its teaching rests on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path; its places of worship are the vihara or monastery, the stupa and the pagoda, and its symbol is the Dharmachakra. The main schools are Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana.

Jainism counts twenty-four Tirthankaras. The first was Rishabhanatha, also called Adinath, the twenty-third Parshvanatha and the twenty-fourth Mahavira, born Vardhamana at Kundagrama near Vaishali, who attained nirvana at Pavapuri in Bihar. Its texts are the Agamas, with the Kalpasutra of Bhadrabahu and the Tattvarthasutra of Umaswami; its three jewels are right faith, right knowledge and right conduct; its two sects are the Digambara and the Svetambara; its place of worship is the temple, called a basadi in the south and a derasar in Gujarat.

Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak, born in 1469 at Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, and was carried forward by ten Gurus down to Guru Gobind Singh, who created the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib in 1699. Its scripture is the Guru Granth Sahib, first compiled as the Adi Granth by Guru Arjan Dev in 1604 and installed in the Harmandir Sahib at Amritsar, the city founded by Guru Ram Das. Its place of worship is the gurudwara, and the Guru Granth Sahib itself has been the living Guru since Guru Gobind Singh.

The faiths born in West Asia

Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, traces itself to Abraham and Moses; its scripture is the Torah, part of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, and its place of worship is the synagogue, with Jerusalem as its holy city.

Christianity grew around Jesus Christ, born at Bethlehem and crucified at Jerusalem. Its holy book is the Bible, in two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament, the latter containing the four Gospels. Its place of worship is the church, its three great branches are the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, and Vatican City is the seat of the Pope. It is the largest religion in the world by number of followers.

Islam was founded by the Prophet Muhammad, born at Mecca and buried at Medina. Its holy book is the Quran, supplemented by the Hadith; its place of worship is the mosque or masjid; its holiest city is Mecca, which holds the Kaaba and towards which the faithful pray. The Islamic calendar, the Hijri, begins from the Hijra of 622, the Prophet's migration from Mecca to Medina. The five pillars are the declaration of faith, prayer, charity, fasting in Ramzan and the Hajj pilgrimage; the two main sects are the Sunni and the Shia. By number of followers Islam is the second largest religion in the world.

The faiths of Iran, China and Japan

Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Parsis, was founded by Zoroaster or Zarathustra in ancient Persia. Its holy book is the Zend Avesta, its place of worship the fire temple, called an agiary, and it honours fire as the symbol of divine purity. Confucianism rests on the teachings of Confucius of China, gathered in the Analects, and Taoism on Lao Tzu and his Tao Te Ching. Shinto, the indigenous faith of Japan, has the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki as its records and the shrine or jinja as its place of worship. The Bahai faith, founded by Bahaullah in nineteenth century Persia, has the Kitab-i-Aqdas as its book and in India is known by the Lotus Temple at New Delhi.