Folklore of India
Encyclopedia
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
of the nation of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and the Indian subcontinent
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
.
The subcontinent of India contains a wide diversity of ethnic
Demographics of India
The demographics of India are inclusive of the second most populous country in the world, with over 1.21 billion people , more than a sixth of the world's population. Already containing 17.5% of the world's population, India is projected to be the world's most populous country by 2025, surpassing...
, linguistic
Languages of India
The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...
, and religious
Religion in India
Indian religions is a classification for religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent; namely Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. These religions are also classified as Eastern religions...
groups. Given this diversity, it is difficult to generalize widely about the folklore of India as a unit.
Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
, the religion of the majority of the citizens of India, is a heterogeneous faith whose local manifestations are diverse. Folk religion
Folk religion
Folk religion consists of ethnic or regional religious customs under the umbrella of an organized religion, but outside of official doctrine and practices...
in Hinduism may explain the rationale behind local religious practices, and contain local myths
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
that explain the existence of local religious customs or the location of temple
Temple
A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur. It has the same root as the word "template," a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out...
s. These sorts of local variation have a higher status in Hinduism than comparable customs would have in religions such as Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
or Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. Some have claimed that the very concept of a "folklore of India" represents a colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
imposition that disparages the Hindu religion. However, folklore as currently understood goes beyond religious or supernatural beliefs and practices, and compasses the entire body of social tradition whose chief vehicle of transmission is oral or outside institutional channels.
Folk art of India
The folk and tribal arts of India are very ethnic and simple, and yet colorful and vibrant enough to speak volumes about the country's rich heritage. Art forms in India have been exquisite and explicit. Folk art forms include various schools of art like the Mughal school, Rajsthani school, etc. Each school has its distinct style of color combinations or figures and its features. Other popular folk art forms include madhubani paintings from bihar and warli paintings from maharashtra. tanjore paintings of south India use real gold work to make paintings.Some of the famous Folk and Tribal Art of India:
- Tanjore Art
- Madhubani Painting
- Warli Folk Painting
- Pattachitra Painting
- Rajasthani Miniature Painting
- Kalamezhuthu
Folktales of India
India possesses a large body of heroic balladBallad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
s and epic poetry
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
preserved in oral tradition, both in Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
and the various vernacular languages of India. One such oral epic, telling the story of Pabujii, has been collected by Dr. John Smith from Rajasthan
Rajasthan
Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...
; it is a long poem in the Rajasthani language
Rajasthani language
Rajasthani Rajasthani Rajasthani (Devanagari: , Perso-Arabic: is a language of the Indo-Aryan languages family. It is spoken by 50 million people in Rajasthan and other states of India and in some areas of Pakistan. The number of speakers may be up to 80 million worldwide...
, traditionally told by professional story tellers, known as Bhopa
Bhopa
The Bhopas are the priest singers of the folk deities in Rajasthan state of India. They perform in front of a scroll, known as phad or par in Rajasthani that depicts the episodes of the narrative of the folk deity and functions as a portable temple...
s, who deliver it in front of a tapestry
Tapestry
Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom, however it can also be woven on a floor loom as well. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a...
that depicts the characters of the story, and functions as a portable temple, accompanied by a ravanhattho fiddle. The title character was a historical figure, a Rajput
Rajput
A Rajput is a member of one of the patrilineal clans of western, central, northern India and in some parts of Pakistan. Rajputs are descendants of one of the major ruling warrior classes in the Indian subcontinent, particularly North India...
prince, who has been deified in Rajasthan. http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/john/pabuji/statement.html
Other noteworthy collections of Indian traditional stories include the Panchatantra
Panchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
, a collection of traditional narratives made by Vishnu Sarma
Vishnu Sarma
Vishnu Sharma was an Indian scholar and author who is believed to have written the Panchatantra collection of fables. The exact period of the composition of the Panchatantra is uncertain, and estimates vary from 1200 BCE to 300 CE...
in the second century BC. The Hitopadesha
Hitopadesha
Hitopadesha is a collection of Sanskrit fables in prose and verse written in the 12 century C.E. It is an independent treatment of the Panchatantra...
of Narayana is a collection of anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
fabliau
Fabliau
A fabliau is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between ca. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by an excessiveness of sexual and scatological obscenity. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decamerone and by Geoffrey Chaucer...
x, animal fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
s, in Sanskrit, compiled in the ninth century.
See also
- BirbalBirbalRaja Birbal was the Grand Vizier of the Mughal court in the administration of the Mughal emperor Akbar. He one of his most trusted members along with being a part of Akbar's inner council of nine advisors, known as the navaratna, a Sanskrit word meaning nine jewels...
- Bidpai
- List of Folktales of Chhattisgarh
Indian folklorists since last thirty years have substantially contributed to the study of folklore. Devendra Satyarthi, Krishna Dev Upadyhayaya, Prafulla Dutta Goswami, Kunja Bihari Dash, Ashutosh Bhatacharya and many more senior folklorists have contributed for the study of folklore. But it is during the 1970s that some folklorists studied in US universities and trained up themselves with the modern theories and methods of folklore research and set a new trend of folklore study in India. Especially, south Indian universities advocated for folklore as a discipline in the universities and hundreds of scholars trained up on folklore. AK Ramanjuan was the noted folklorist to analyse folklore from Indian context.
Study of folklore was strengthened by two stremas (sicsic); one is Finnish folklorist Lauri Honko
Lauri Honko
Lauri Honko was a professor of folklore studies and comparative religion.- Life and work :Honko was a disciple of Martti Haavio. The title of his doctoral dissertation was Krankheitsprojektile...
and another is Peter J. Claus of American folklore. These two folklorists conducted their field work on Siri Epic and Tulu Epic respectively and led the Indian folklorists to the new folklore study. The Central Institute of Indian Languages has played a major role in promoting folklore studies in India to explore the another reality of Indian culture.
Recently scholars such as M. D. Muthukumaraswamy, Vivek Rai, Jawaharlal Handoo, Birendranath Dutta, P. C. Pattanaik, B. Reddy, Sadhana Naithani, P Subachary, Molly Kaushal, Shyam Sundar Mahapatra, Dr Bhabagrahi Mishra and many new folklorists have contributed in their respective field for shaping
folklore study as a strong discipline in representing the people's memory and people's voice. Recently the National Folklore Support Center in Chennai has taken the initiative to promote folklore in public domain and bridging the gap of academic domain and community domain.
Indian folk heroes, villains, and tricksters
Indian folk heroes in Sanskrit epics and history and also in freedom movement are well known to every one.They have found a place in written literature. But in Indian cultural sub-system,Indian folk heroes are most popular. The castes and tribes of India have maintained their diversities of culture through their language and religion and customs. So in addition to national heroes, regional heroes, and local folk and tribal heroes are alive in the collective memory of the people.Lets take examples of the Santals or the Gonds. The Santals have their culture hero "Beer kherwal" and "Bidu Chandan". Gonds have their folk hero "Chital Singh Chatri". Banjara folk hero is "Lakha Banjara" or "Raja Isalu". But not only heroes, the heroines of Indian folklore have also significant contribution in shaping the culture of India.Banjara epics are heroine-centric. These epics reflect the "sati" cult. Oral epics with heroic actions of heroes and heroines produce a "counter texts" as opposed to the written texts. Therefore the younger brother becomes hero and kill his elder brother in an oral epic, which is forbideen in classical epics. Folk heroes are some times deified and are worshipped in the village. There is a thin difference of a mythic hero and romantic hero in Indian folklore. In Kalahandi oral epics are available among the ethnic singers performed in ritual context and social context. Dr Mahendra Mishra, a folklorist has conducted research on oral epics in kalahandi taking seven ethnic groups.
Indian oral epics are found abundantly every where there are caste based culture.Prof. Lauri Honko from Turku, Finland with prof. Vivek Rai and Dr K Chinnapa Gawda have extensively conducted field work and research on Siri Epic and have came out with three volumes on Siri Epic. Similarly Prof.Peter J Claus has done intensive work on Tulu epics.
Aditya Mallick on Devnarayan Epic,Pulikonda Subbachary on jambupurana, Dr JD Smith on Pabuji epic are some of the commendable work that have been drawn attention of the wider readership.
Cultural archetypes and icons
- AhimsaAhimsaAhimsa is a term meaning to do no harm . The word is derived from the Sanskrit root hims – to strike; himsa is injury or harm, a-himsa is the opposite of this, i.e. non harming or nonviolence. It is an important tenet of the Indian religions...
- "Amul baby"
- CurryCurryCurry is a generic description used throughout Western culture to describe a variety of dishes from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Thai or other Southeast Asian cuisines...
- Gandhian
- Ganges
- Gurukula
- Gully Cricket
- Hindu undivided familyHindu joint familyA Hindu Joint Family or Joint Family is an extended family arrangement prevalent among Hindus of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of many generations living under the same roof. All the male members are blood relatives and all the women are either mothers, wives, unmarried daughters, or widowed...
- MahoutMahoutA mahout is a person who drives an elephant. The word mahout comes from the Hindi words mahaut and mahavat. Usually, a mahout starts as a boy in the 'family business' when he is assigned an elephant early in its life and they would be attached to each other throughout the elephant's life.The most...
- Masala (film genre)Masala (film genre)Masala is a term given to films of Indian cinema that mix various genres in one film. Typically these films freely mix action, comedy, romance, and drama or melodrama. These films tend to be musicals that include songs filmed in picturesque locations...
- Mega SerialIndian soap operaIndian soap operas are soap operas written, produced, filmed in India, with characters played by Indians , with episodes broadcast on Indian television channels/channel chains that are not often limited to the Republic of India itself: often many “serials,” as they’re more commonly referred to as,...
- SadhuSadhuIn Hinduism, sādhu denotes an ascetic, wandering monk. Although the vast majority of sādhus are yogīs, not all yogīs are sādhus. The sādhu is solely dedicated to achieving mokṣa , the fourth and final aśrama , through meditation and contemplation of brahman...
- Snake charmerSnake CharmerSnake charmer can mean:*Snake charming, the practice of "hypnotizing" snakes*Snake Charmer, a 1983 album by guitarist The Edge, bassist Jah Wobble, multi-instrumentalist Holger Czukay, drummer Jaki Liebezeit, and DJ/remixer François Kevorkian...
- Taj MahalTaj MahalThe Taj Mahal is a white Marble mausoleum located in Agra, India. It was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal...
- YogaYogaYoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
- Yakshi
Traditional games of India
India has a long history of board games. You hear about these from the times of the Mahabharata and the Mughal empire. Some of the popular board games that originated from Indian Traditional games include Chess (Shatranj), Ludo (Pacheesi) and Snakes and Ladders (Moksha-Patamu).Recently, Orissa, a state in eastern India, introduced a child-friendly programme called Srujan (creativity) in the primary schools. About 18 million children took part in four activities like story telling activities, traditional games, traditional art and craft and music and dance and riddles over a period of three years (2007–2010). The result is that while there are hundreds of varieties of folktales, the varieties of traditional games are limited. About three hundred traditional games both in door and out door were commonly played and it was found that the traditional games contain mathematical knowledge (like counting, measurement, shapes and size, geometrical ideas and finally socialization through action). The traditional games are the best ways of teaching and learning.Interestingly, when these are applied in the primary schools, many teachers revealed that children know many games that the teachers have forgotten.
Indoor board game like "Kasadi" ( a wooden board with 14 pits played with tamarind seed by two ormore than two girls in the domestic domain) was most popular ansdit is still not vanished from the society. DrMahendra Kumar Mishra, a folklorist and an educator has collected these games and has documented in video form.Besides other games in the domestic domain is the goat and the tiger and ganjifa
Ganjifa
Ganjifa, or Gânjaphâ, is a card game that originated in Persia and became popular in India under the Mughal emperors in the 16th century.-Description:The name Ganjifa comes from the Persian word ganjifeh , meaning playing card...
. These were the forerunners of the card games of today. Ganjifa used to be circular painted stack of card like things which were played using certain rules.
Indian folklorists
The scientific study of Indian folklore was slow to begin: early collectors felt far freer to creatively reinterpret source material, and collected their material with a view to the picturesque rather than the representative.A. K. Ramanujan's
A. K. Ramanujan
Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan was a scholar of Indian literature who wrote in both English and Kannada. Ramanujan wore many hats as a Indian poet, scholar and author, those of a philologist, folklorist, translator, poet and playwright. His academic research ranged across five languages: Tamil,...
theoretical and aesthetic contributions span several disciplinary areas. Context-sensitivity is a theme that appears not only in Ramanujan's cultural essays, but also appears in his writing about Indian folklore and classic poetry. In "Where Mirrors are Windows," (1989) and in "Three Hundred Ramayanas" (1991), for example, he discusses the "intertextual" nature of Indian literature, written and oral...He says, "What is merely suggested in one poem may become central in a 'repetition' or an 'imitation' of it. His essay "Where Mirrors Are Windows: Toward an Anthology of Reflections" (1989), and his commentaries in The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (1967) and Folktales from India, Oral Tales from Twenty Indian Languages (1991) are good examples of his work in Indian folklore studies.
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
was interested in folklore, dealing with English folklore in works such as Puck of Pook's Hill
Puck of Pook's Hill
Puck of Pook's Hill is a historical fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history. The stories are all narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the area of Kipling's own house Bateman's, by people...
and Rewards and Fairies
Rewards and Fairies
Rewards and Fairies is a historical fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling published in 1910. The title comes from the poem Farewell, Rewards and Fairies by Richard Corbet. The poem is referred to by the children in the first story of the preceding book Puck of Pook's Hill...
; his experiences in India led him to also create similar works with Indian themes. Kipling spent a great deal of his life in India, and was familiar with the Hindi language. His works such as the two Jungle Books contain a great deal of stories that are written after the manner of traditional folktales. Indian themes also appear in his Just So Stories
Just So Stories
The Just So Stories for Little Children were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. They are highly fantasised origin stories and are among Kipling's best known works.-Description:...
, and many of the characters bear recognisable names from Indian languages. During the same period, Helen Bannerman
Helen Bannerman
Helen Bannerman was the Scottish author of a number of children's books, the most notable being Little Black Sambo. She was born in Edinburgh and, because women were not admitted as students into British Universities, she sat external examinations set by the University of St. Andrews and attained...
penned the now notorious Indian-themed tale of Little Black Sambo
Little Black Sambo
The Story of Little Black Sambo is a children's book written and illustrated by Helen Bannerman, and first published by Grant Richards in October 1899 as one in a series of small-format books called The Dumpy Books for Children....
, which represented itself to be an Indian folktale.
After independence, disciplines and methods from anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
began to be used in the creation of more in- depth surveys of Indian folklore.
Folklorists of India can be broadly divided in to three phases. Phase I were the British Administrators who collected the local knowledge and folklore to understand the subjects they want to rule. next were the missionaries who wanted to acquire the language of the people to recreate their religious literature for evangelical purpose. Third phase was the post independent period in the country where many universities, institutes and individuals started studying the folklore . the purpose was to search the national identity through legends, myths, and epics. In course of time Academic institutions and universities in the country started opening departments on folklore in their respective regions, more in south India to maintain their cultural identity and also maintain language and culture.
After independence, scholars like Dr Satyendra, Devendra Satyarthi, Krishnadev Upadhayaya, Jhaberchand Meghani, Prafulla Dutta Goswami, Ashutosh Bhattacharya, Kunja Bihari Dash, Chitrasen Pasayat, Somnath Dhar, Ramgarib choube, jagadish Chandra Trigunayan and many more were the pioneer in working on folklore. Of course, the trend was more literary than analytical.
It was during 1980s that the central Institute of Indian Languages and the American Institute of Indian Studies started their systemic study on Folklore any after that many western as well as eastern scholars pursued their studies on folklore as a discipline.
The pioneer of the folklorists in contemporary India are Jawaharlal Handoo,Anjali Padhi ,Sadhana Naithani,Kishore Bhattacharjee,kailash Patnaik, VA Vivek Rai,late Komal Kothari
Komal Kothari
Komal Kothari , commonly known as Komalda, was an Indian folklorist and ethnomusicologist from Jodhpur, Rajasthan. A pioneer in the study of Indian folkore, he is most known for his work on the folklore of Rajasthan and its links to Music of Rajasthan and its instruments...
,Raghavan Payanad, M Ramakrishnan, and many more. An emerging trens of new folklorists have emerged who are committed to understand folklore from Indian point of view than to see the whole subjects from the western model. Some of them are better prefer to understand folklore from the folklore provider and consultants who are the creator and consumers of folklore.User of folklore know what folklore is since their use folklore with purpose and meaning. But theoreticians see folklore from their theoritical angle.Ethcs point of view, folklorist should learn from the folk as practicable as possible and folk should give the hidden meaning of folklore to the folklorist, so that both of their interpretation can help giving a new meaning to the item of folklore and explore the possibility of use of folklore in new socio-cultural domain.
Now National Folklore support Center , Chennai since last ten years has created a space for the new scholars who are pursuing the study of folklore with their commitment.
One important breakthrough in the field of folklore is that it is no more confiled to the study in the four wall of academic domain, rather , it has again found its space with in and among the folk to get their true meaning.
See also
- YakshaganaYakshaganaYakshagana is a musical theater popular in the coastal and Malenadu regions of Karnataka, India. Yakshagana is the recent scholastic name for what are known as kēḷike, āṭa, bayalāṭa, bayalāṭa, daśāvatāra . It is believed to have evolved from pre-classical music and theatre during Bhakti movement...
- History of IndiaHistory of IndiaThe history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...
- Culture of IndiaCulture of IndiaIndia's languages, religions, dance, music, architecture, food and customs differ from place to place within the country, but nevertheless possess a commonality....
- Music of IndiaMusic of IndiaThe music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, popular, pop, classical music and R&B. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and developed over several eras. It remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as...
- Indian artIndian artIndian Art is the visual art produced on the Indian subcontinent from about the 3rd millennium BC to modern times. To viewers schooled in the Western tradition, Indian art may seem overly ornate and sensuous; appreciation of its refinement comes only gradually, as a rule. Voluptuous feeling is...
- Indian danceIndian danceDance in India covers a wide range of dance and dance theatre forms, from the ancient classical or temple dance to folk and modern styles.Three best-known Hindu deities, Shiva, Kali and Krishna, are typically represented dancing. There are hundreds of Indian folk dances such as Bhangra, Bihu,...
- TamashaTamashaTamasha is a traditional Marathi folk art form. often with singing and dancing, widely performed by local or travelling theatre groups within the state of Maharashtra, India. It has also been the subject of several Marathi films...
- Indian literatureIndian literatureIndian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognized languages....
- Cuisine of India
- Music of India
- Hindu scriptures
- Hindu Epics
- RamayanaRamayanaThe Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon , considered to be itihāsa. The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India and Nepal, the other being the Mahabharata...
, MahabharataMahabharataThe Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
, the PuranasPuranasThe Puranas are a genre of important Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religious texts, notably consisting of narratives of the history of the universe from creation to destruction, genealogies of kings, heroes, sages, and demigods, and descriptions of Hindu cosmology, philosophy, and geography.Puranas... - Hindu mythologyHindu mythologyHindu religious literature is the large body of traditional narratives related to Hinduism, notably as contained in Sanskrit literature, such as the Sanskrit epics and the Puranas. As such, it is a subset of Nepali and Indian culture...
, Vedic mythologyVedic mythologyVedic mythology refers to the mythological aspects of the historical Vedic religion and Vedic literature, most notably alluded to in the hymns of the Rigveda...
, Aryan mythology - Hindu deitiesHindu deitiesWithin Hinduism a large number of personal gods are worshipped as murtis. These beings are either aspects of the supreme Brahman, Avatars of the supreme being, or significantly powerful entities known as devas. The exact nature of belief in regards to each deity varies between differing Hindu...
- List of Hindu deities
- List of Hinduism-related articles