Hindu Deities - Origin and Historical Development

Origin and Historical Development

Around 1500 BC several waves of Aryan immigration took place in north west India. Many of the names of the Indo-Aryan deities (e.g. Agni, Indra, Varuna) are almost synonymous with deities in Persian, Greek and Roman mythology (see Proto-Indo-European religion). Through a slow process of hybridisation the Indo-Aryan deities were merged into the many local cults, a process that spread from the north west to the east and south of the subcontinent through the movement of "fortune-seekers, traders or teachers", and still continues today in some parts of India.

Read more about this topic:  Hindu Deities

Famous quotes containing the words origin and, origin, historical and/or development:

    “We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than that something has occurred.”
    —Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)

    “Somehow we have been taught to believe that the experiences of girls and women are not important in the study and understanding of human behavior. If we know men, then we know all of humankind. These prevalent cultural attitudes totally deny the uniqueness of the female experience, limiting the development of girls and women and depriving a needy world of the gifts, talents, and resources our daughters have to offer.”
    —Jeanne Elium (20th century)