It is loosely known as Brahmanism because of the religious and legal importance it places on the
brāhmaṇa (priestly) class of society. Brahmanism takes as sacred truth, in addition to the Veda, various law books (the Dharmaśāstras and Dharmasūtras), mythic epics (the
Mahābhārata and
Rāmāyaṇa), and a wide range of non-Vedic myths recounted in the Purāṇas. These texts, the earliest of which may date to the second part of the first millennium BCE and the lattermost of which to the medieval period, are known as
smṛti, "remembered truth."
Both Vedism and Brahmanism, then, accept the Veda as sacred. The difference between the two is that Brahmanism also includes doctrines and mythic themes that do not specifically derive from the Vedas and therefore is ideologically more inclusive than Vedism. Some of these ideas find expression in various ritual practices such as temple worship and the domestic ceremony known as pūjā, in the notion of a society arranged according to vocational function (varṇa) and stage of life (āśrama), in meditation and renunciatory practices, in vegetarianism and reverence for the cow, in the importance of the teacher (guru) for transmitting the tradition, and in other non-Vedic themes that play important parts in Hindu religious life and thought.
