500-400 BC- Analects

The Analects (Chinese: 論語; Old Chinese:*run ŋ(r)aʔ; pinyin: lúnyǔ; literally: "Edited Conversations"),^[2] also known as the Analects of Confucius, is a collection of sayings and ideas attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius and his contemporaries, traditionally believed to have been compiled and written by Confucius' followers. It is believed to have been written during the Warring States period (475 BC–221 BC), and it achieved its final form during the mid-Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD). By the early Han dynasty the Analects was considered merely a "commentary" on the Five Classics, but the status of the Analects grew to be one of the central texts of Confucianism by the end of that dynasty.

During the late Song dynasty (960-1279) the importance of the Analects as a philosophy work was raised above that of the older Five Classics, and it was recognized as one of the "Four Books". The Analects has been one of the most widely read and studied books in China for the last 2,000 years, and continues to have a substantial influence on Chinese and East Asian thought and values today. They were very important for Confucianism and China's overall morals.

Confucius believed that the welfare of a country depended on the moral cultivation of its people, beginning from the nation's leadership. He believed that individuals could begin to cultivate an all-encompassing sense of virtue through ren, and that the most basic step to cultivating ren was devotion to one's parents and older siblings. He taught that one's individual desires do not need to be suppressed, but that people should be educated to reconcile their desires via rituals and forms of propriety, through which people could demonstrate their respect for others and their responsible roles in society. He taught that a ruler's sense of virtue was his primary prerequisite for leadership. His primary goal in educating his students was to produce ethically well-cultivated men who would carry themselves with gravity, speak correctly, and demonstrate consummate integrity in all things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analects

http://ctext.org/analects

500 BC- Spring and Autumn Annals

The Spring and Autumn Annals (Chinese: 春秋; pinyin: Chūnqiū) is an ancient Chinese chronicle that has been one of the core Chinese classics since ancient times. The Annals is the official chronicle of the State of Lu, and covers a 241-year period from 722 to 481 BC. It is the earliest surviving Chinese historical text to be arranged in annals form.^[1] Because it was traditionally regarded as having been compiled by Confucius (after a claim to this effect by Mencius), it was included as one of the Five Classics of Chinese literature.

The Annals records main events that occurred in Lu during each year, such as the accessions, marriages, deaths, and funerals of rulers, battles fought, sacrificial rituals observed, celestial phenomena considered ritually important, and natural disasters.^[1] The entries are tersely written, averaging only 10 characters per entry, and contain no elaboration on events or recording of speeches.^[1]

During the Warring States period (475–221 BC), a number of commentaries to the Annals were created that attempted to elaborate on or find deeper meaning in the brief entries in the Annals. The Commentary of Zuo (Zuo zhuan 左傳), the best known of these commentaries, became a classic in its own right, and is the source of more Chinese sayings and idioms than any other classical work.^[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_Annals

http://ctext.org/chun-qiu-zuo-zhuan

500 BC-Yasht

The Yashts (Yašts) are a collection of twenty-one hymns in the Younger Avestan language. Each of these hymns invokes a specific Zoroastrian divinity or concept. Yasht chapter and verse pointers are traditionally abbreviated as Yt.

The word yasht derives from Avestan yešti, "for venerate" (see Christian Bartholomae`s Altiranisches wörterbuch, section 1298), and several hymns of the Yasna liturgy that "venerate by praise" are—in tradition—also nominally called yashts. These "hidden" Yashts are: the Barsom Yasht (Yasna 2), another Hom Yasht in Yasna 9-11, the Bhagan Yasht of Yasna 19-21, a hymn to Ashi in Yasna 52, another Sarosh Yasht in Yasna 57, the praise of the (hypostasis of) "prayer" in Yasna 58, and a hymn to the Ahurani in Yasna 68. Since these are a part of the primary litury, they do not count among the twenty-one hymns of the Yasht collection.

All the hymns of the Yasht collection "are written in what appears to be prose, but which, for a large part, may originally have been a (basically) eight-syllable verse, oscillating between four and thirteen syllables, and most often between seven and nine."^[1]

Most of the yazatas that the individual Yashts praise also have a dedication in the Zoroastrian calendar. The exceptions are Drvaspa and Vanant.

The twenty-one yashts of the collection (notes follow):

Yasht #	title / nominally invokes [a]	in praise of [b]	extent
1.	Ohrmazd Yasht[c]	Ahura Mazda	33 verses
2.	Hapt Amahraspand Yasht[c]	the seven Amesha Spentas	15 verses
3.	Ardawahisht Yasht[c]	Asha Vahishta of "Best Truth"	19 verses
4.	Hordad Yasht[c]	Haurvatat of "Wholeness" and "Perfection"	11 verses
5.	Aban Yasht[b]	Aredvi Sura Anahita of the waters[f][g]	132 verses
6.	Hwarshed Yasht	Hvare-khshaeta of the "Radiant Sun"	7 verses
7.	Mah Yasht	Maonghah of the "Moon"	7 verses
8.	Tishtar Yasht	Tishtrya, the star Sirius	62 verses
9.	Drvasp Yasht	Drvaspa, guardian of horses[d]	33 verses
10.	Mihr Yasht	Mithra of "Covenant"	145 verses
11.	Srosh Yasht	Sraosha of "Obedience"[e]	23 verses
12.	Rashn Yasht	Rashnu of "Justice"[e]	47 verses
13.	Fravardin Yasht	the Fravashis	158 verses
14.	Warharan Yasht	Verethragna, "Smiter of resistance"	64 verses
15.	Ram Yasht[b]	the "good"[i] Vayu	58 verses
16.	Den Yasht[b]	Chista, "Wisdom"	20 verses
17.	Ard Yasht	Ashi of "Recompense"[g]	62 verses
18.	Ashtad Yasht[b]	khvarenah, the "(divine) glory"	9 verses
19.	Zam Yasht	see note[b] below	97 verses
20.	Hom Yasht	Haoma[h]	3 verses
21.	Vanant Yasht	Vanant, the star Vega	2 verses

Notes:

a. ^	The Yashts did not originally have titles. These were assigned at some time during the Common Era, and hence reflect the Middle Persian forms of the divinities' names.
b. ^	Several Yashts are—despite their names—hymns to other divinities or concepts. Yasht 5 is nominally to the waters but primarily addresses Aredvi Sura Anahita, who is (also) a divinity of the waters. Yasht 15 is nominally to Raman (Rama Kshathra) but praises the "good" Vayu[i] Yasht 16 is nominally to Daena "insight, revelation" but actually invokes Chista "Wisdom". Chista and Daena are very closely associated with one another. Yasht 18, nominally to Arshtat, is actually an ode to khvarenah, the "(divine) glory". Yasht 19, nominally to Zam, the "Earth", has very little to do with the earth. See Zam for details.
c. ^	Yashts 1–4 are "mediocre, meaningless texts, composed in incoherent language; they probably result from a very late expansion of the Yašt collection."[1]
d. ^	Yasht 9 to Drvaspa has a number of verses that are originally from Yasht 5, the hymn to the waters.[2]
e. ^	Yashts 11 and 12 are respectively hymns to Sraosha and Rashnu, but are to some extent also an extension of Yasht 10, the hymn to Mithra. Sraosha and Rashnu are both attendants of Mithra.
f. ^	There is also a "hidden" Yasht to the waters at Yasna 38.
g. ^	Yasht 5 (in praise of Aredvi Sura Anahita) and Yasht 17 (to Ashi) share a number of verses. It is not possible to determine which of the two is the original.
h. ^	The Avesta has two hymns that were later titled Hom Yasht. The original is part of the Yasna liturgy and hence not counted as a Yasht. The other, Yasht 20, is a duplicate of the three verses of Yasna 9-11.
h. ^	Vayu, divinity of wind and atmosphere, is a dual divinity: part benevolent and part malign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasht http://www.avesta.org/ka/ka_tc.htm#yashts

500-400 BC Mahabharata Epics and Ramayana Epic

The Mahābhārata (Sanskrit: महाभारतम्, Mahābhāratam, pronounced [məɦaːˈbʱaːrət̪əm]) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa.^[1]

The Mahābhārata is an epic narrative of the Kurukṣetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes. It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or puruṣārtha (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the Mahābhārata are the Bhagavadgītā, the story of Damayantī, an abbreviated version of the Rāmāyaṇa, and the story of Ṛṣyasringa, often considered as works in their own right.

Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahābhārata is attributed to Vyāsa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE.^[2] The text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE).^[3] The title may be translated as "the great tale of the Bhārata dynasty". According to the Mahābhārata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called simply Bhārata.^[4]

The Mahābhārata is the longest known epic poem and has been described as "the longest poem ever written".^[5][6] Its longest version consists of over 100,000 śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. About 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Rāmāyaṇa.^[7][8] W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahābhārata in the context of world civilization to that of the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the Qur'an.^[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata

http://www.holybooks.com/mahabharata-all-volumes-in-12-pdf-files/

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The Ramayana (/rɑːˈmɑːjənə/;^[1] Sanskrit: रामायणम्, Rāmāyaṇam, pronounced [rɑːˈmɑːjəɳəm]) is an ancient Indian epic poem which narrates the struggle of the divine prince Rama to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana. Along with the Mahabharata, it forms the Sanskrit Itihasa.

The epic, traditionally ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki, narrates the life of Shri Ram Chandra, the legendary prince of Kosala Kingdom, his banishment from the kingdom by his father, King Dasharatha, his travels across forests in India with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, the kidnap of his wife by Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, resulting in a war with him, and Rama's eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned king.

The Ramayana is one of the largest ancient epics in world literature. It consists of nearly 24,000 verses (mostly set in the Shloka meter), divided into seven Kandas (books) and about 500 sargas (chapters). In Hindu tradition, it is considered to be the adi-kavya (first poem). It depicts the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters like the ideal father, the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife and the ideal king. The Ramayana was an important influence on later Sanskrit poetry and Hindu life and culture. Like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is not just a story: it presents the teachings of ancient Hindu sages in narrative allegory, interspersing philosophical and ethical elements. The characters Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Bharata, Hanuman and Ravana are all fundamental to the cultural consciousness of India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and south-east Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia.

There are many versions of the Ramayana in Indian languages, besides Buddhist, Sikh and Jain adaptations; and also Cambodian, Indonesian, Filipino, Thai, Lao, Burmese and Malaysian versions of the tale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/mahabharata-the-ramayana-and-the-mahabharata

563-500 BC Gautama Budda and Buddhism

Gautama Buddha (c. 563 BCE/480 BCE – c. 483 BCE/400 BCE), also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha,^[4] or simply the Buddha, after the title of Buddha, was an ascetic (śramaṇa) and sage,^[4] on whose teachings Buddhism was founded.^[5] He is believed to have lived and taught mostly in the eastern part of ancient India sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE.^{[6][note 3]}

Gautama taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism found in the śramaṇa movement^[7] common in his region. He later taught throughout other regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kosala.^[6][8]

Gautama is the primary figure in Buddhism. He is recognized by Buddhists as an enlightened teacher who attained full Buddhahood, and shared his insights to help sentient beings end rebirth and suffering. Accounts of his life, discourses, and monastic rules are believed by Buddhists to have been summarized after his death and memorized by his followers. Various collections of teachings attributed to him were passed down by oral tradition and first committed to writing about 400 years later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha

Buddhism (pronunciation: /ˈbʊdɪzəm/ or /ˈbuːdɪzəm/)^[1][2] is a religion^[3][4] and dharma that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices largely based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. Buddhism originated in India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, from where it spread through much of Asia, whereafter it declined in India during the middle ages. Two major extant branches of Buddhism are generally recognized by scholars: Theravada (Pali: "The School of the Elders") and Mahayana (Sanskrit: "The Great Vehicle"). Buddhism is the world's fourth-largest religion, with over 500 million followers or 7% of the global population, known as Buddhists.^{[web 1][5]}

Buddhist schools vary on the exact nature of the path to liberation, the importance and canonicity of various teachings and scriptures, and especially their respective practices.^[6][7] Practices of Buddhism include taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, study of scriptures, observance of moral precepts, renunciation of craving and attachment, the practice of meditation (including calm and insight), the cultivation of wisdom, loving-kindness and compassion, the Mahayana practice of bodhicitta and the Vajrayana practices of generation stage and completion stage.

In Theravada the ultimate goal is the attainment of the sublime state of Nirvana, achieved by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path (also known as the Middle Way), thus escaping what is seen as a cycle of suffering and rebirth.^[8] Theravada has a widespread following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

Mahayana, which includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Shingon and Tiantai (Tendai), is found throughout East Asia. Rather than Nirvana, Mahayana instead aspires to Buddhahood via the bodhisattva path,^[10] a state wherein one remains in the cycle of rebirth to help other beings reach awakening. Vajrayana, a body of teachings attributed to Indian siddhas, may be viewed as a third branch or merely a part of Mahayana. Tibetan Buddhism, which preserves the Vajrayana teachings of eighth century India,^[11] is practiced in regions surrounding the Himalayas, Mongolia^[12] and Kalmykia.^[13] Tibetan Buddhism aspires to Buddhahood or rainbow body.^[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism

599-527 BC-Mahavira and Last Tirthankar of Jainism

Mahavira (Mahāvīra), also known as Vardhamāna, was the twenty-fourth and last Jain Tirthankara (ford maker, spiritual teacher). Mahavira was born into a royal family in what is now Bihar, India, in 599 BC. At the age of 30, he left his home in pursuit of spiritual awakening, and abandoned worldly things, including his clothes, and became a monk. For the next twelve-and-a-half years, Mahavira practiced intense meditation and severe penance, after which he became kevalī (omniscient).

For the next 30 years, he travelled throughout the Indian subcontinent to teach Jain philosophy. Mahavira taught that the observance of the vows ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truth), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (chastity) and aparigraha (non-attachment) is necessary to elevate the quality of life. He gave the principle of Anekantavada (pluralism), Syadvada and Nayavada. The teachings of Mahavira were compiled by Gautama Swami (his chief disciple) and were called Jain Agamas. Most of these Agamas are not available today. Jains believe Mahavira attained moksha (liberation from the cycle of birth and death) at the age of 72.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahavira

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In Jainism, a tirthankara (Sanskrit tīrthaṅkara) is a saviour and spiritual teacher of the dharma (righteous path).^[1] The word tirthankara signifies the founder of a tirtha, which is a fordable passage across the sea of interminable births and deaths, the saṃsāra. According to Jains, a tirthankara is a rare individual who has conquered the saṃsāra, the cycle of death and rebirth, on his own and made a path for others to follow. After understanding the true nature of the Self or soul, the Tīrthaṅkara attains Kevala Jnana (omniscience) and refounds Jainism. Tirthankara provides a bridge for others to follow the new teacher from saṃsāra to moksha (liberation).^[2][1][3]

According to Jain cosmology, in each half of the cosmic time cycle, exactly twenty-four tirthankaras grace this part of the universe. The first tirthankara was Rishabhanatha, who is credited for formulating and organising humans to live in a society harmoniously. The 24th and last tirthankara of present half-cycle was Mahavira (599-527 BC).^[3][4] History records the existence of Mahavira and his predecessor, Parshvanatha, the twenty-third tirthankara.^[5]

A tirthankara organises the sangha, a fourfold order of male and female monastics, srāvakas (male followers) and śrāvikās (female followers).^[6]

The tirthankara's teachings form the basis for the Jain canons. The inner knowledge of tirthankara is believed to be perfect and identical in every respect and their teachings do not contradict one another. However, the degree of elaboration varies according to the spiritual advancement and purity of the society during their period of leadership. The higher the spiritual advancement and purity of mind of the society, the lower the elaboration required.

While tirthankaras are documented and revered by Jains, their grace is said to be available to all living beings, regardless of religious orientation.^[7]

Tīrthaṅkaras are arihants who after attaining kevalajñāna (pure infinite knowledge)^[8] preach the true dharma. An Arihant is also called Jina (victor), that is one who has conquered inner enemies such as anger, attachment, pride and greed.^[2] They dwell exclusively within the realm of their Soul, and are entirely free of kashayas, inner passions, and personal desires. As a result of this, unlimited siddhis, or spiritual powers, are readily available to them – which they use exclusively for the spiritual elevation of living beings. Through darśana, divine vision, and deshna, divine speech, they help others in attaining kevalajñana, and moksha (final liberation) to anyone seeking it sincerely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirthankara