Hindu Mythology

It is central to Hindu belief that there exists a single God and there are several gods that embody the one true God, “even though there are officially 330 Million gods.” Emphasized our guide. Due to the range of gods and goddesses that Hindu religion accepts as the embodiment of the God, there also exists diverse religious sects that emphasize different gods over the other and thus believe in slightly different mythologies. Through this essay, we will examine some incongruence in Hindu mythology and discuss the role of storytelling in Hindu belief.

There was this painting of a little blue devil being nursed by a struggling, evil looking woman. The story goes like that: Once upon a time, there was this king who wanted to organize the marriage of his cousin. And so, on the day of the wedding, he wanted to bring the married couple to the castle but then the skies split in two and god showed himself saying: “What are you doing? You are marrying the couple who’s 8th child (boy, reincarnation of Vishnu) will kill you for this.” That moment, he turned around his horse and send the couple to prison. Days passed by and the first 7 children of the couple were born in prison and killed right away, but on one stormy night, their 8th child was born. On that night, because of the storm, all of the doors in the prison were open and the father of the child managed to escape and bring the child to a friend whose wife had just given birth to a little girl and so they exchanged babies. The father came home with the little baby girl and the next day, the king was announced that there was a little baby girl born and not a boy as the prophecy said. Very confused and angry, he knew there was something wrong, so he personally came to kill the baby girl. The moment he took the baby by its leg to through it against the pavement, the baby girl slipped away and told him: “What are you doing? Whom are you trying to kill? Your killer is far away now and the prophecy will be fulfilled.” The king was very angry and he called a devil to go find the boy and kill him. The devil then transformed his appearance into his adoptive mother and pursued to nurse him (having her nipples filled with poison), but because the little boy was so powerful he sucked the devil to death and years later he killed the king.

Among numerous divine figures, Shiva, the head god of Varanasi, is certainly one of the most prominent and the most worshiped gods. Hinduism believes in the idea of trimurti: the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer. Shiva marks himself within the Hindu divine hierarchy by being the destroyer among the three main figures. There is another version of trimurti, the feminine trimurti, being the gathering of Mahasaraswati, Mahalakshmi, and Mahakali. Among the three, the first two are noticeable as the “great” form of the consorts of Brahma and Vishnu, the first two of the male trimurti. Mahakali, on the other hand, derives from another goddess, Kali, the destroyer, distinct from Shiva. The difference among the Hindu trimurti narratives was intriguing by itself. However, when I stood in front of Alice Boner’s Triptych, I was shocked. She, as a western artist and scholar of Hinduism, created her own trimurti of Brahma, Vishvarupa – the cosmic form of Vishnu, and Kali. This merge between the masculine and the feminine trimurti echoed the diversity of belief and mythology among Hindu tradition that is actively created and transformed.

Once our guide told us the story, he added, “anybody can make up their own god and their own little story, but we, Hindus, believe in only one god.”

by Eliza, Daniel