Hinduism in Indonesia, as of the 2018 census, is practised by about 1.74% of the total population, and almost 87% of the population in Bali. Hinduism is one of the six official religions of Indonesia. Hinduism came to Indonesia in the 1st-century through Indian traders, sailors, scholars and priests. A syncretic fusion of pre-existing Javanese folk religion, culture and Hindu ideas, that from the 6th-century also synthesized Buddhist ideas as well, evolved as the Indonesian version of Hinduism. These ideas continued to develop during the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires. About 1400 CE, these kingdoms were introduced to Islam from coast-based Muslim traders, and thereafter Hinduism, which was previously the dominant religion in the region, mostly vanished from many of the islands of Indonesia. Indonesia has the fourth-largest population of Hindus in the world, after India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Though being a minority religion, the Hindu culture has influenced the way of life and day-to-day activities in Indonesia. Outside of Bali, many adherents of traditional indigenous religions identify as Hindus in order to gain official recognition. History The indigenous peoples of the Indonesian Archipelago believed in animism and dynamism, practices commonly shared among many tribal peoples around the world. In the case of the first Indonesians, they especially venerated and revered ancestral spirits; they developed a belief that certain individuals’ spiritual energy may inhabit (or be reincarnated in) various natural objects, beings and places, such as animals, insects, trees, plants, stones, forests, mountains, or any place deemed sacred. This unseen spiritual entity and supernatural knowledge is identified by the ancient Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese as "hyang", which can mean either “divine” or “ancestral”. In modern Indonesian, "hyang" tends to be associated with the notion of God. Arrival of Hinduism Hindu influences reached the Indonesian Archipelago as early as the first century. In tales like the "Kidung Harṣa Wijaya" one reads that "rata bhaṭṭāra Narasingha" supposedly was a scion in the lineage of Hari, and that Hari is another word for "Vishnu". Early translators of Kavi manuscripts misunderstood the "being a son of" and assumed that Vishnu actually had human offspring and so on. Here however we must conclude a belonging to a religious school of thought, Vaisnavism. Therefore, early Hinduism on Java, Bali, and Sumatra consisted of both main schools of Hinduism. Thus, historical evidence is not entirely unclear about the diffusion process of cultural and spiritual ideas from India. Java