Religion - - Posted on May, 6 at 4:14 pm
Deifying and hero worship have been hardwired into the way of life of the subcontinent. There is scarce a square kilometer of land where one would not find a temple, shrine or simply a boulder or tree daubed with Kumkum or some coloured powder and offerings strewn about.
Every home, village, town, forest, river, mountain is believed to have its own patron deity. With the result, the ancients, given their proclivity for figures of astronomical proportions, have said that there are 330 million deities or gods! That is nearly a third of India’s present population.
Most deities worshipped are one or the other form of the main deities of the Hindu pantheon. Local deities are often given the flavour of the place and associated with an incident that is believed to have happened at that spot in the hoary past. At times, the temple and the resident deity may even find mention in one of the Puranas.
Featured in this section are only the main deities of the Hindu pantheon and the legends associated with them.
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