The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2 Vol Set)

House of Clay Realm of punishment described in a verse in the Rg Veda(7.89), the earliest Hindu religious text. As described in ...

malleability makes the stone easy to carve and facilitated the lush detail characteristic of Hoysala temples. The Hoysaleshvar T ...

to be sacrificed and their deaths they were treated as virtual divinities, since they were considered to have been consecrated t ...

It is deemed acceptable for women to marry people of higher social status (hypergamous marriage), because it is believed that th ...

I Iconic Image A pictorial or representational likeness of a deity, such as a statue or picture. This is in contrast with an ani ...

Depictions of this mass impalement can be seen in murals painted at the Minakshi temple in Madurai—whose construction far postda ...

Aryans are the original inhabitants of India, and as proof point to the artifacts found in the Indus Valley civilization, an anc ...

Some of Indra’s attributes and func- tions remain constant as the Hindu tra- dition changed and developed. In later Hindu mythol ...

Agastya, who becomes angry when the king, deep in meditation, fails to greet the sage with proper respect. After much pleading, ...

Pakistan for most of its length. The Indus is traditionally considered one of the seven sacred rivers of India—the others are th ...

Some experts believe this reflected reli- gious concern for ritual purity, rather than hygiene. Many of the artifacts from these ...

pastoral group of outsiders called the Aryans. The language of the Aryans, Sanskrit, shows certain structural rela- tionships wi ...

recovered, but these same artifacts can also be used as evidence for widely dif- fering conclusions. The objects them- selves ar ...

is linguistically distinct from the Indo- Aryan language family. Those who espouse the Indigenous Aryan view, which identifies t ...

tortoise, the man replies, “another tortoise.” Several similar queries bring the same reply, until in frustration the man bursts ...

Inscriptions The oldest Hindu inscriptions are the edicts of Ashoka, which were either carved on rock faces or on stone pillars; ...

lunar year. The discrepancy meant that the two calendars would increas- ingly diverge, such that (for example) “spring” festival ...

transcend the illusion that objects are unconnected and recognize the one real power in the universe. The insight is believed to ...

ISKCONcomes out of this Bengali tra- dition, but in other ways it shows ten- sions that mark it as a twentieth-century phenomeno ...

J Jabali A famous sage in Hindu mythology and sonof the sage Vishvamitra. Despite his biological origins, Jabali eventually beco ...