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In Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, major cities of the Indus valley civilization, female figurines were found in almost all households indicating the presence of cults of goddess worship. [12] Most figurines are naked and have elaborate coiffures. [13] Some figurines have ornaments or horns on the head and a few are in poses that expose the genitals ...
The cult of Vāsudeva and Saṃkarṣaṇa was one of the major independent cults, together with the cults of Narayana, Shri and Lakshmi, which later coalesced to form Vishnuism. [1] According to the Vaishnavite doctrine of the avatars , Vishnu takes various forms to rescue the world, and Vāsudeva as well as Saṃkarṣaṇa became understood ...
The history of devotional movements is as ancient as that of the worship of the significant deities. While Hinduism is often described as having 30,000 gods in its pantheon, from an anthropological and historical perspective the most significant devotional movements of the past two thousand years have centered on only a few. But together with ...
Goddesses such as Uma appear in the Upanishads as another aspect of divine and the knower of ultimate knowledge (Brahman), such as in section 3 and 4 of the ancient Kena Upanishad. [7] [8] Hymns to goddesses are in the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata, particularly in the Harivamsa section, which was a late addition (100 to 300 CE) to the work. [9]
The ancient emergence of Vaishnavism is unclear, and broadly hypothesized as a fusion of various regional non-Vedic religions with worship of Vishnu. It is considered a merger of several popular non-Vedic theistic traditions, particularly the Bhagavata cults of Vāsudeva-Krishna [ 7 ] [ 8 ] and Gopala-Krishna , [ 7 ] [ 9 ] as well as Narayana ...
The Heliodorus pillar, dedicated by a Greek ambassador from the court of Indo-Greek king Antialcidas circa 100 BCE, contains the first known inscription related to the Bhagavata cult in India. [ 12 ] In the ninth century CE Bhagavatism was already at least a millennium old and many disparate groups, all following the Bhagavata Purana could be ...
Early and influential work in the area that set the trend for Hindu interpretations of archaeological evidence from the Harappan sites was that of John Marshall, [8] who in 1931 identified the following as prominent features of the Indus religion: a Great Male God and a Mother Goddess; deification or veneration of animals and plants; a symbolic representation of the phallus and vulva; and, use ...
Both the Mantramarga and Atimarga are ancient traditions, more ancient than the date of their texts that have survived, according to Sanderson. [185] Mantramārga grew to become a dominant form of Shaivism in this period. It also spread outside of India into Southeast Asia's Khmer Empire, Java, Bali and Cham. [187] [188]