Well the other side of the coin is, Indian civilization survives. The same language, rituals, stories, music, food, imagery used, are all pretty much alive outside and inside thousands of temple even today. Those aspects of culture have somehow weathered invasion, natural disasters, famine, and drought. You can't say the same about Egyptian civilization.
> The same language, rituals, stories, music, food, imagery used, are all pretty much alive outside and inside thousands of temple even today.
Technically, it's not the same language, culture, etc. The living culture has changed considerably over the centuries both organically and via outside influences, including Islam.
The surprising thing about India is that it has kept around so much of the really ancient stuff while also adding a huge amount of new stuff along the way. Cultural hoarding, if you will.
It's like the cultural change process is sedimentary, with previous layers being preserved below, while the newer layers get added above, giving a kind of continuity, whereas in other parts of the world, it has often tended to be a more volcanic process, with the destruction of what preceded.
Also, Indian culture long ago accepted what to Western thinking seems like a contradiction of polytheistic icon based religious worship and the belief in a more abstract deity, or even atheism.
In the West, this resulted in the complete disposal of the previous pantheons, but in India, it was rationalized through a "many perspectives" lens where all the viewpoints could be accommodated.
How it was described by my Indian friends was that, at least in their households, the religious stories were treated more like 'campfire stories'; not practically real, but entertaining, and good for teaching morality (that's not to say that there aren't Hindus that take it very seriously). This is as opposed to how most westerners treat religion, in a very literal sense - Moses/Muhammed/Jesus DID exists and their teachings ARE the word of God, and they must be strictly adhered to.
Yes, that description represents my experience also. Even religious rituals were treated that way - as a means to develop focus and self-discipline.
That said, in the same households, people can still be very superstitious, because practically, sometimes being that way helps you explain otherwise difficult things that happen in life.
Hindus care about the actions and their effects rather than details such as the equipment used, the date it happened , place etc. The details may be important to "prove" something, but it doesn't really help the "listener" in any meaningful way. Hindus mostly care about how it helps the listener, what is that it must be learned from that experience. This is one of the reason why newer ideas don't replace older ideas for Hindus. As long as the old knowledge is meaningful and adds value, it will be in use. If the newer knowledge or idea, adds value it will be added with the old useful one. That's all. Hindus follow a simple and pragmatic system.
This is a bit of a rosy view of acceptance. Buddhists thats painstakingly built the Ajanta and Ellora cave complexes weren't accepted. They were wiped out by the Hindu Priesthood that felt threatened. Human beings are capable of great stupidity irrespective of what culture they have preserved.
There are great lessons in both, what they got right and what they got wrong.
I don't think that the process I described happened peacefully, or that nobody was wronged or injured in the process - I just observed that the result is a greater state of preservation of what preceded.
But even in the case of Buddhism, one outcome of the repression of Buddhism was the coopting of large parts of it, at least the parts that didn't threaten the Hindu social structure. Whether or not it is widely known today, Buddhism had a major reformatory impact on what we call Hinduism today.
There is no war or destruction caused by the Hindu Priests in the entire history of Hindus. They were neither trained in warfare nor they were taught to destroy/kill others. Most of these priests don't even touch meat or can stand the smell of meat. There is no way the priests can unleash violence.
