INTRODUCTION TO INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

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dirtystinkingdemons.com - The Gods Laid Bare - Myth without the Pith

Gods of the 'isms' ...

Sandwiched between fifteen hundred miles of Himilayan mountains, the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, the residents of India had plenty of time to come up with their beliefs and engineering genius pretty much undisturbed - it wasn't an easy place to get to back in the day! The ancient towns of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro had an organised system of government around 3000 bc, and had baked brick multi storey buildings which were more advanced than the egyptians at the time.

1000 bc saw the arrival of the Aryans from Iran, bringing with them a religion fronted by Indra which would come to be known as Hinduism. This religion originally operated on a three tier class system. Unsurprisingly the priest's class were already closer to heaven, sitting pretty right at the top of the tree with the poor old tradesman sitting right at the bottom with a mind boggling 82,000 rebirths to deal with before they were even considered worthy of making it to the promised land.

Buddhism and Jainism arrived in the 6th century bringing hope for a better deal as far as reincarnation goes, preaching that you didn't have to live as a self righteous obsessive religious mentalist to achieve total creaminess and you could easily skip a few dozen thousand steps of rebirth if you kept your nose clean.

The religion, beliefs and therefor Pantheon of India has been constantly changing for centuries as bits and bobs were taken from here and there, with deities given new roles or makeovers but never completely discarded as religions jostled for popularity. Unsurprisingly, Buddhism became the religion of choice for the common man, at one point threatening to completely eclipse Hinduism. But whats this? The Brahmans are shaking things up. They've introduced humans into the religion claiming the gods couldn't function without them. Sages were elevated to superstar status and a new breed of Gods were about to take the country by storm. The emergance of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as the new breed of Indian supergods had sent the Vedic originals tumbling from their perches and into religions equivalent of burger flippers by comparison .. or the dole queue.

INDIAN MYTHOLOGY in a nutshell..
Location : The whole of India from North to South including KonKan, Deccan Plateau, Kashmir, Bombay, Goa and Bangladesh
Specific Region/Culture/People : Hindu, Jainist, Buddhist and Sikk
Pronunciation : n/a
Category : n/a
Gender : n/a
God/dess of : n/a
Also known as : n/a

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