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
Vedas inspired later Hindu scholars such as Adi Shankara to classify each Veda into "karma-kanda" (कर्म खण्ड, action/ritual-related sections) and "jnana-kanda" (ज्ञान खण्ड, knowledge/spirituality-related sections). The texts considered "Vedic" in the sense of "corollaries of the Vedas" is less clearly defined, and may include numerous post-Vedic texts such as the later Upanishads and the Sutra literature. Texts not considered to be "shruti" are known as "smriti" (Sanskrit: ""; "the remembered"), or texts of remembered traditions. This indigenous system of categorization was adopted by Max Müller and, while it is subject to some debate, it is still widely used. As Axel Michaels