Peterburgian Vedism "to know" ("vedat")—a semantic root which is shared in Slavic and Sanskrit languages alike—, and it expresses the difference between sight or knowledge and dogmatic belief ("verit"), the latter being typical of non-Vedic doctrines. According to one of the contemporary leaders of the Peterburgian Vedic movement, Roman Perin, "Rodnovery" defines the practised religion, while "Vedism" defines the philosophy or knowledge at its core. Vedism therefore is not a religion but pure knowledge. According to Bezverkhy, dogmatic religions such as Christianity, but also Brahmanism (the successor of Vedism in India), were created in order to control the masses. Bezverkhy codified his
Historical Vedic religion religious ideas of Indo-Europeans who migrated into the Indus River valley region of the subcontinent, whose religion relied on the Vedic corpus including the early Upanishads. Brahmanism, according to Heesterman, refers to the religion that had expanded to a region stretching from the northwest subcontinent to the Ganges valley. Brahmanism included the Vedic corpus and non-Vedic literature such as the "Dharmasutras" and "Dharmasastras", and was the version of ancient Hinduism that gave prominence to the priestly (Brahmin) class of the society. According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", Brahmanism refers to both the predominant position of the priests (Brahmans) and the importance