Historical Vedic religion Historical Vedic religion The historical Vedic religion (also known as Vedism, Brahmanism, Vedic Brahmanism, and ancient Hinduism) refers to the religious ideas and practices among Indo-Aryan-speaking peoples of ancient India after about 1500 BCE. These ideas and practices are found in the Vedic texts, and they were one of the major influences that shaped contemporary Hinduism. According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", in the Hindu tradition and particularly in India, the Vedic religion is considered to be a part of Hinduism. According to Heinrich von Stietencron, in the 19th century western publications, the Vedic religion was believed to be different from
Ancient Iranian religion composed) initially in the 5th-century BC. Another Iranian source are royal inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire made in the Old Persian (with Akkadian, Aramaic and Elamite translations). These inscriptions, in particular those of Darius I and his son Xerxes I, contain many references to religion. The fact that these are fixed in time and place make them particularly useful. Except from the Achaemenid inscriptions, there is no evidence that the Iranian religious compositions were written until the late Parthian or Sassanid period. This makes ancient Iranian religion the only major religion of the Middle East which has no written texts