epics Ramayana and Mahabharata showed the
emergence of the forms of religion called, in cur-
rent academic terms, Hinduism. These specifically
show a contrast to the forms found in earlier Vedic
“Brahminism.”
In the Sanskrit epics, still widely known in
myriad versions in India today, the gods Shiva
and Vishnu begin to emerge as the focal points for
cultic worship. Shiva appears to be a god of the
Himalayas who was identified by the Brahmins
with the god Rudra of the Vedas. In all likelihood
the cultic Shiva was fashioned from an amalgam
of traditional sources over many centuries. This
pattern of taking local traditions and creating
direct connection of them with the Vedas was an
ongoing feature in the evolution of the Brahmini-
cal tradition.
Similarly, Vishnu and his numerous avatars
emerged from a mélange of cultural sources.
Vishnu in the Vedas was not at all a significant
divinity. But the cult of Vishnu was organized
around a sense of continuity with this Vedic divin-
ity and the larger monistic philosophy that devel-
oped in the Vedic tradition. The epic Ramayana is
understood to be a story of the descent of Vishnu
to Earth in order to defeat the demons. Likewise,
Krishna, as warrior, another important avatar of
Vishnu, was central to the Mahabharata epic. In
both epics, stories of Shiva are also found scat-
tered throughout.
A similar phenomenon occurs in the career
of the great Goddess, Shakti, in Hindu tradition.
Shakti forms the third large cultic center in Hin-
duism, whose worshippers, called shaktas, believe
in the supremacy of the goddess. The develop-
ment of shakti worship began to take shape at the
beginning of the Common Era, some centuries
later than the developments in the other cultic
contexts.
The Bhagavad Gita (c. 100 B.C.E.), which is
found in the Mahabharata (MBh), identifies the
god Krishna with the brahman of the Upanishads.
The likelihood is that Krishna was a divinity of
certain western Indian groups, who had reached
such popularity that he could not be ignored. Itmay have been that Krishna was originally a tribal
chieftain. In the Mahabharata itself he is spoken
of consistently as God only in the Bhagavad Gita,
which is clearly a later addition to the MBh. This
identification of a local god with the highest divin-
ity (and further with Vishnu) shows a pattern that
leads to the incredible diversity of Hinduism. All
across India in the next thousand years numerous
local gods and goddesses are taken up into the
larger Hindu tradition.
Examples from as far away as South India,
the last area of India to accept the Aryan ethos,
demonstrate the process of absorption of local
divinities into the larger Hindu pantheon. Lord
Venkateshvara of Tirupati, in Andhra Pradesh,
a hill divinity who may have been worshipped
in the same spot for several thousand years, was
first identified with Shiva and then later identi-
fied as the god Vishnu himself. Tirupati there-
upon became part of the Vaishnavite tradition
and a pilgrimage site of great importance. Simi-
larly, the goddess Minakshi in the temple city of
Madurai, most probably a goddess of her home
region in Tamil Nadu for many, many centuries,
was associated with Shiva by being identified
as his wife. In fact, she appears late enough not
to be identified with Parvati, his usual spouse,
but as a separate wife. Likewise, the Tamil god
Murugan became identified as the youngest son
of Shiva and Parvati.
Over the era from perhaps 600 B.C.E. until as
late as the 14th century various local divinities
were slowly but systematically absorbed into the
Vedic or Brahmanical tradition. The Sanskrit texts,
the puranas, composed from the fourth to the 12th
centuries C.E., tell tales of the complicated and
varied lives of Vishnu, Shiva, and the Goddess,
but many local tales in local languages and San-
skrit tell the more hidden tales of how these local
godly kings and queens became part of the larger
tradition. The earliest additions to the pantheon
of Hinduism were clearly those gods and god-
desses who formed the basis of the Vishnu and
Shiva cults. Parvati was likely a mountain goddess
who may have ruled the mountains on her ownIntroduction xxi Ji-xL-hindu-fm.indd xxi 12/14/06 1:02:37 AM