Everyday Hinduism

Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118528181
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Hinduismo

This innovative introductory textbook explores the central practices and beliefs of Hinduism through contemporary, everyday practice.

• Introduces and contextualizes the rituals, festivals and everyday lived experiences of Hinduism in text and images
• Includes data from the author's own extensive ethnographic fieldwork in central India (Chhattisgarh), the Deccan Plateau (Hyderabad), and South India (Tirupati)
• Features coverage of Hindu diasporas, including a study of the Hindu community in Atlanta, Georgia
• Each chapter includes case study examples of specific topics related to the practice of Hinduism framed by introductory and contextual material

1
Families of Deities

To enter the Hindu pantheon of gods, goddesses, and other powerful beings for the first time is much like an Indian bride marrying into a large extended family and being introduced to the relatives. Gradually, the bride learns which relatives she will encounter every day and whom she will see only once or twice a year at festivals or weddings, who her immediate neighbors are, and who will be her allies in her new home. While family networks are large and sometimes complicated, there is a core of relatives and neighbors whom the new bride gets to know rather quickly, followed by concentric circles of relatives who are significant, but not part of her daily life. Similarly, there is a family of deities with whom a Hindu interacts regularly in domestic worship, deities she/he may seek out in local temple visits, deities she/he may encounter only periodically (or maybe even a single time) – on pilgrimage, during festivals, and/or as a result of illness or a vow taken for a specific cause – and still others she/he may know narratively, but whom she/he does not encounter ritually. This chapter will introduce some of these deities and some of the ways in which they relate one to the other to create “families”; and in the process, the chapter will display the polytheistic imagination and rich narrative worlds that characterize Hindu traditions.

The “families of deities” with whom Hindus interact may be created through literal or figurative kinship or they may be created ritually or narratively. Certain families of deities are identified with particular regions and/or are related through pilgrimage routes; other families are created through domestic or temple worship. To introduce the pantheon of deities that populates Hindu worlds, we start with conceptual and narrative families and then move to families of deities created through ritual practices. The deities described below may be found in the domestic shrines described at the end of this chapter and in temples, rituals, and festivals described in following chapters; many may also be encountered by readers of this book in museums and Hindu homes. However, given the expansive pantheon of deities in Hindu traditions, the families of deities described below are necessarily selective.

Most of the stories of gods and goddesses related in this chapter can be found in the puranas, a class of texts from which is derived most Hindu mythology known by contemporary Hindus. There are 18 “major” Sanskrit puranas, 18 “sub-major” ones, and a multitude of oral regional-language traditions also called puranas, including caste puranas that tell the story of how a particular caste came into existence and why that caste plays the occupational and/or ritual role that it does. The puranas tell the stories of gods and goddesses, demons, and human devotees, and the creation and dissolution of the world. For example, the acts of Krishna are narrated in the Bhagavata Purana; the creation of and acts of the goddess (Devi) in the Devi Mahatmya section of the Markandeya Purana; and many stories of Shiva in the Shiva Purana. Sthala puranas (lit., puranas about place) include narratives about the power of particular sacred places, the rituals that should be performed at those places, and the benefits the worshipper will derive from these rituals. I have not provided textual references for most of the narratives below since they circulate orally and are often not readily identified by either their narrators or audiences with a particular purana, and their oral performances may vary considerably from the textual, Sanskrit puranas.

The Trimurti

One conceptual family of deities is the Trimurti (lit., three forms): Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva – identified in this configuration as the creator, preserver, and destroyer/transformer of the universe, respectively. The three deities are not traditionally worshipped together in this form; rather, the Trimurti is a concept within which the primary forces of life are identified: creation, sustenance, and death. I have heard many Hindus in the United States begin their explanations of the Hindu pantheon of deities, or even individual deities, to non-Hindus with the Trimurti, as a way to “make sense” for their audiences of the multiplicity characteristic of the pantheon. In contemporary Hindu practices, however, Brahma has lost his equal footing with Shiva and Vishnu; and the ritually significant triad is Shiva, Vishnu, and the goddess (Devi).

While Brahma images can be found on temple exteriors and he remains active in mythology as the deity from whose mouth the four Vedas emerge and as a bestower of boons, there are only a few temples in contemporary India dedicated to this god.¹ Several stories circulate about why Brahma is no longer popularly worshipped. One describes Brahma and Vishnu both trying to find the end of Shiva’s linga (Shiva’s aniconic form), the end of which no one could see. Brahma came back from his search saying he had found the end; Vishnu admitted that he had been unable to do so. However, Shiva knew Brahma was lying and declared a curse that Brahma would no longer be worshipped. Brahma’s consort, on the other hand (who does not appear with him in the Trimurti configuration), Sarasvati – goddess of speech, language, and the arts – is actively worshipped by contemporary Hindus throughout India, particularly students. Shiva and Vishnu will appear in descriptions and narratives that follow below.

Mythological and Narrative Families

Shiva, Vishnu, and Devi (the goddess) all have multiple forms and narratives. The goddess appears both as consort of male deities and independently without a male consort. Their mythological families also include the deities’ offspring and the animal mounts (vahanas) with which they are associated.

Vishnu

Vishnu appears narratively and iconographically in both cosmic form and as a series of incarnations (avataras, lit., descent) who come to earth to restore dharma by resolving very particular problems (often caused by demons with particular forms). In his cosmic form of Narayana, Vishnu rests between the cycles (yugas) of the universe upon an ocean of milk; he lies upon the serpent Sesha, whose multiple hoods shade him; his wife Lakshmi is depicted massaging his feet. This reclining Vishnu is sometimes portrayed with Brahma – who will actually enact the creation that Vishnu imagines – seated on a lotus that emerges from his navel. Vishnu is commonly experienced by Hindus in India and the Hindu diaspora – on an everyday basis, ritually – as the god who takes avataras, rather than in his cosmic form.

Figure 1.1 Vishnu lying on the cosmic ocean, Northern Madhya Pradesh, 11th century CE (31.5 × 44 inches).

Courtesy of the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University. Photo by Bruce M. White, 2007.

The Dasa Avataras, Manifestations of Vishnu: Vishnu has taken nine avataras, with the tenth still to come, to battle against those who threaten the dharma of the world; together these ten are known as the dasa avataras. (Note that avatara is also a more expansive category that includes manifestations of Vishnu outside of the dasa avataras; see Chapter 4 for a geographically local avatara of Vishnu.) Members of this dasa avatara conceptual family are not traditionally worshipped together as a unit (that is, they are not a ritual family); however, they are frequently visualized together in artistic forms. The listings of the dasa avataras shift between different texts, particularly with the inclusion or not of Balarama and Buddha; but one common puranic and visually portrayed listing is as follows.

In the first of the four yugas – cycles of the universe that descend in length and quality of dharma observance by humans – the Satyayuga (lit., age of truth), Vishnu appeared as:

• Matsya, the fish who saved the earth from a cataclysmic flood.
• Kurma, the tortoise upon whose back the churning stick was placed in the narrative of the “churning of the ocean,” in which the gods and anti-gods (asuras) churned up from the ocean bottom th...