Chapter 6 Religions of South Asia 197in numerous texts: the Mahabharata, the 18 major Puranas (plus others). Shiva
and Vishnu became the greatest gods, each with his special traits and mytholo-
gies, replacing earlier and vaguer deities like Indra and Varuna. Vishnu had 10
(or more) incarnations, including most importantly Rama and Krishna (who
each got his own texts, temples, and devotional traditions). They had consorts
and wives, who turned, in the medieval period, into high goddesses, maha devis,
with divine power (Shakti) that fascinated and terrified their followers. They,
too, became known through their own Puranas and worship. Humans con-
nected with these deities through devotion, often emotional, often imagined in
metaphors of romantic love (bhakti). Temples were something new—special
homes built for the gods, many of them architecturally complex. The gods had
to be installed, their eyes painted open in elaborate ceremonies; priests served
them and assisted worshippers in puja (worship).
Despite the proliferation of gods with their elaborate mythologies, there was
an assumption that all the gods were one in the end. All goddesses are forms of
Devi, or Shakti. Many gods turn out to be incarnations of Vishnu, including
Rama, Krishna, and Buddha. Brahma, an early four-faced deity, more or less
disappears. Shiva alternates asceticism and eroticism and has multiple wives
who go off on their own adventures. What else could you assume from the
myths showing gods turning into one another, slipping in and out of human,
divine, or animal forms? Beyond “all the gods are one” is a deeper monism, that
all living things, human and animal, are part of a single universal being. This is a
greater reality than all the fabulous multiplicity of the world of rebirth, which is
ultimately illusion. So the astonishing polytheism is embedded in an underlying
monism, though the polytheism is always the dominant strand. This underlying
monism probably became more marked after true monotheists arrived from the
West with Islam and Christianity, but it was there implicitly from the start.The Hindu-Buddhist Traditions
As you might guess from the word itself, “Hinduism” is a late-arriving
Anglicism intended to include the whole religion of the people of India (i.e.,
Hind—see the introduction to part III), minus several identifiable other reli-
gions: Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism, Jainism. (The morpheme “–ism” is what
gives it away.) The term is widely used and also widely disparaged; there is no
single “tradition” here, but there are many and diverse beliefs and practices
across the subcontinent. The term “Hindu” (not to be confused with Hindi, a
language of North India) is older, coming into use when Muslims came into
South Asia and needed a term to distinguish the native people from the follow-
ers of Mohammad; a Hindu was a person who followed the customs of Hind.
But who knew what those were? The conquering Turks and Mongols invested
a great deal of effort in documenting and understanding the customs of Hind.
There was also little reason to differentiate “custom” from “religion”—still a
problematic distinction. Nevertheless, Hinduism is by now a fixed category in