the religions of india, china and japan

The years between 600BC to 551BC represented a golden period for the birth of great thinkers in the eastern as well as the western lands.

In 600BC, the founder of Taoism, Lao-tzu was born in China.

In 580 BC, Pythagoras, a great mathematician as well as the founder of the dualism of the body and soul, was born in Greece.

In 563BC, Siddhartha Guatama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism (and, by influence, Japanese Shinto), was born in India.

In 551BC, Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, was born in China.

Unlike the bloodthirsty polytheistic and monotheistic religions - demanding a blood sacrifice of one sort or another in order to placate a god and gain whatever it was that worshippers wanted - the major religions that developed in India and China after the 6th Century BC were a lot more civilized and centered more on ethics, social behavior and personal enlightenment than organized worship of a god.

In India, Hinduism - encapsulating karma and the rigid caste system, without which man has no place - derived from the fears and ignorance of the early Indic civilization before 3000 BC and continues to the present day. Ancient Hinduism was, of course, an influencing force in the rise of the new thinkers of the 6th century BC, particularly Buddha, an Indian prince, whose four Noble Truths and the eight-fold path makes no provision for a god.

In China, Confucianism - advocating reverence of ancestors - differed from Buddhism and Taoism in that there were no temples or priests. Taoism, as represented by the magnificent White Cloud Temple in Peking, differs from Buddhism and Confucianism in that it has many gods - all for mundane purposes, such as the kitchen god that still exists in superstitious Chinese households - but it, too, is concerned wholly with man's benevolence.

In Japan, Shinto was developed as a particular form of Japanese Buddhism - worshipping Nature in the form of mountain and forest gods - and, like all of the far-eastern religions, it is particularly strong on truthfulness. In 1871, Shinto was proclaimed the Japanese national religion.

the first religions had many gods

The first archeological evidence of religious worship was found in northern Spain where a shrine was found in El Juyu cave and dated 12,000 BC.

Before the idea of one God was first established c. 1850 BC by Abraham - the founding father of both the Jewish and the Moslem peoples - the mode of worship was similar in all parts of the world. There was no organized religion per se other than polytheism - otherwise known as Paganism.

In India, polytheism evolved to form the religion of Hinduism (or Brahmanism) which dates from the Bhagavad-Gita of 3102 BC in which, according to tradition, the god Krishna defined the rigid caste system that, despite democracy, still permeates Indian life.

Polytheism, or Paganism, is the worship of many gods - relating to fertility, manhood, harvest, riches and protection from ills. Similar idols relating to each type of god or goddess were found in the shrines of disparate civilizations. That the gods were fashioned from human or animal forms - and were similar in civilizations separated from each other - is understandable. To ascribe to a god a human form is, apparently, a human trait.

The female idols - the goddesses - were more numerous than those of animals depicting the strength or phalluses of manhood. This may indicate that religion was primarily a pastime of women but, on the contrary, because much of it was highly erotic - and men have traditionally had more time on their hands than women, who were burdened with bearing, nursing and raising small children - religion was mostly a male pastime.

The Canaanite idols worshipped were principally Baal, represented either by a bull or a phallic stone, his consort Astarte, the fertility goddess and Moloch, the child-devouring god. Similar to religious practices all over the ancient world, burnt offerings and sacrifices were made to these gods in return for power, riches, prestige and victory. One of the ancient Canaanite and Sumeric gods, Tammuz, the god of the dying, curiously remains with the Jewish religion in the form as a month in the Jewish calendar.

The practice of human sacrifice was common to most ancient religions, but infant sacrifice was particularly common. Even Abraham, back in c.1790 BC, was 'commanded' by God to sacrifice his son; in the 9th century BC, when Ahab was the King of Israel, he and his wife Jezebel sacrificed two sons on the altar of Baal; and both King Ahaz and King Manasseh (who sawed the Prophet Isaiah in two during his reign 687-642 BC) ritually sacrificed children to Moloch in the Valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem.

Modern religions may have abolished human sacrifices, but blood still plays an important part in worshipping God. Childless Abraham started the Jewish practice of circumcision as a Blood covenant with God in return for the promise of children - which the Jews still follow, as do the Moslems, and a lot of Christians adopted, too - but the Christian Church initiated another practice, the Eucharist, drinking the blood and eating the body of Christ - a rite that causes many to consider it a cannibalistic religion.