Imagine a beautiful nursery having fragrant and colourful flowers. The Gardener has the knowledge of how to cultivate them, trim them, grow them etc. He plants the seeds and gives adequate manure and water. He has the knowledge of which seed needs how much of what resource. Once this is done the plant grows, he protects them from bad weather, directs them towards sunlight. He experiments , learns and practices this daily. The solutions and process that he devises to make the nursery blooming forms his knowledge and the craft.
Now, when the plant grows up and starts blooming, starts giving beautiful flowers, whose fragrance is felt all across the locality, the whole locality enjoys it. But now neither the locality knows how this happened nor the plant knows. And in fact the process forward is even more beautiful and autonomous.
Once the flower grows, one of its part becomes fruit. the locality enjoys the fruit. Then the seeds of the same fruit fall on the ground and if conditions are right new plant comes up. Years passed and gardener aged and died. Slowly the locality forgot him but the nursery he had made was now self sustaining. It gave flowers, fruits and fragrance for generations. The entire locality now forgot the knowledge that the gardener had and assumed that the nursery and orchard is there for us to just consume and enjoy. But yes, they knew few rules those were set by the gardener and passed from generation to generation. Don't over consume the fruits and make the trees completely barren. Water the plants if rain is not adequate. Respect the trees and don't cut them. These rules took the form of tradition and got absorbed in daily practice. This tradition helps them sustain the nursery and the orchard, but the knowledge of creating the orchard is lost with the death of the Gardner.
Now this gardener is the original thinker and practitioner, Our Vedic Rishis, Our Tirthankars, Our Bhagwans, Our Great Gurus. The rituals, the tradition of watering the plant, not cutting the tree, how to dispose dry leaves etc. are the rituals and practices in modern terms we call panths or religions. But fortunately in our case the Gardener has left us his original thought, his original process, his original experiments, his original knowledge in form of our ancient wisdom and philosophies along with the rituals. The rituals evolve, change as per condition, the context and the overall environment around us. Hence we see multiplicity in various 'panths' that try to sustain this beautiful nursery and orchard in its own way.
On one side of the orchard there were thieves and dacoits and they were lethal and cruel. They would come and sack and plunder the orchard. To counter them Warriors emerged, their practices and rituals evolved in such a way that they could counter the violence. Their rituals seemed violent to many.
There were merchants and traders who traded the fruits and fragrances and from whatever profits they got they nurtured the orchard. Their business suffered when violence erupted, the orchard didn't get enough care when time of war was going on. Violence helped no one they thought, hence their rituals were non-violent.
The people who took care of the orchard by toiling in the sun for long hours were respected for their hard work and rewarded. But unfortunately over a long period people started neglecting them. The neighbours and invaders also kept discriminating and provoking them.
For expansion of the orchard the gardener's words and wisdom were carried all across the fertile land and these knowledgeable wise men were revered all across. Wherever they travelled they not only imparted their learnings but also assimilated the learnings and local knowledge and passed on to future generations.
And that is how a beautiful plantation of fruit giving orchards and fragrant flower giving nurseries were built which we call the Bharatiya Sanskriti and Sabhyata (Indian Civilization).
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