HINDU MYTHOLOGY, VEDIC AND PURANIC

The author reveals that this work will serve as a classical dictionary of India; whilst the classification of the gods will enable the student to obtain a general view of Hindu mythology, and of the relation in which one deity stands to others. Hindu mythology can easily become a bewildering subject. There are a vast number of gods, demigods and supernatural beings (some writers refer to as many as 330 million deities). More than this, the beliefs concerning them, their roles in religious practice, and their manifestations in different texts vary according to time, place, and tradition throughout India’s vast territory and long history. And as many legends are given at some length, the book can hardly fail to be interesting to the general reader, who may not have time or opportunity to refer to the sacred writings from which they are taken. A word of explanation respecting the classification of the deities is called for. It will be noticed that some of those described as belonging to the Vedic Age appear under the same or other names in the Purin as whilst others spoken of as belonging to the Puranic Age have their origin, traceable indeed with difficulty in some cases, in the Vedas. The Vedic gods are those whose description is chiefly to be found in the Vedas, and whose worship was more general in the Vedic Age the Puranic are those who are more fully described in the Puranas, and whose worship was more general in the Puranic Age. It should be noticed that this work does not profess to contain new translations of the Hindu Scriptures, nor to give very much information that is not to be found scattered in many other books. The writer has honestly striven to keep his mind free from prejudice and theological bias, and wishing to let the sacred books speak for themselves, have refrained from commenting on the passages quoted, excepting in cases where some explanation seemed necessary.