The term Hinduism refers to the civilization of the Hindus, originally, the inhabitants of the land of the Indus River. Introduced in about 1830 by British writers, it properly denotes the Indian civilization of approximately the last 2,000 years, which evolved from Vedism the religion of the Indo- European peoples who settled in India in the last centuries of the 2nd millennium BC. The spectrum that ranges from the level of popular Hindu belief to that of …showed first 75 words of 543 total…

…showed last 75 words of 543 total…creator, preserver, or transformer and reabsorber of everything. Although it is being in itself, without attributes and qualities and hence impersonal, it may also be conceived of as a personal high God, usually as Vishnu or Siva. This fundamental belief in and the essentially religious search for ultimate reality - that is, the One is the All- have continued almost unaltered for more than 30 centuries and has been the central focus of India's spiritual life.