by Shamma B S

Created on: May 24, 2007

Australia is a continent whose culture, social and religious history can be traced back to at least twenty-five thousand years. Many scholars extend it to forty thousand years or beyond. According to some researchers, however, this period could extend even to a past as remote as one hundred and thirty thousand years of unbroken, unadulterated and undisturbed growth of religion.

The Australian continent is not only unique in having been completely broken off from the rest of the world, it is also unique in containing within it hundreds of social islands, each comprising tribes that remained entirely isolated from each other. It is known that between five hundred to six hundred such tribal units had their own independent history of social and religious development, throughout an age of twenty-five to forty thousand years, in complete isolation from each other except for occasional marginal contacts at the boundaries of their territories.

Such contacts were not only brief, but also ineffectual in transferring their ideologies, beliefs, myths and superstitions to each other. It was not only the language barriers which stood in the way, but also their traditional aversion to socialize and communicate with outsiders, which had created an impassable barrier in the way of transfer of information from one to the other.

If the sociologist's view which begins with the negation of God has any substance in it, then in each of the Aboriginal tribes we should have discovered the same universal trend of worshipping objects of nature gradually evolving into belief in one Supreme God. What we discover, however, to the utter chagrin of the sociologist is a completely different story.

In all the tribes of Australia, without exception, there exists a belief in one Supreme Power, who is the first cause of all creation. Their descriptions differ on minor points and their terminology varies slightly, but according to the consensus of the sociologists and anthropologists, they all invariably believe in the existence of that ultimate first cause called 'High Gods'-another name for Allah, God, Brahm and Parmatama etc.

The central idea of one eternal Supreme Creator remains unadulterated by whatever other superstitions they may have entertained. The superstitions change from tribe to tribe, but not their belief in one God. Nowhere in Australia could the sociologists find any evidence of a gradual evolution of the idea of God. The views prevailing among the different tribes differ only in description.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>