4th century BCE

This group gathers the deities of Hinduism, one of the largest and most internally varied bodies of divine figures in the atlas. Hindu theology ranges across the spectrum from the many-god image of popular devotion to the strict non-dualism of the philosophers, for whom the countless gods are aspects of a single reality, Brahman. Both readings are held within the tradition and neither is treated here as the correct one.

The browser will find the great gods of the classical and Puranic tradition (Vishnu the preserver and his avatars, Shiva the destroyer and transformer, Brahma the creator), alongside the goddess in her many forms (Devi, Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati), the elephant-headed Ganesha, and the older Vedic powers such as Indra, Agni and Surya who stand behind them.

The layers matter and the entries mark them. The oldest figures belong to the Vedic hymns of the second millennium BCE; the familiar gods of temple worship take their mature shape later, in the epics and the Puranas. Some Vedic deities faded as others rose, and regional and sectarian traditions (Vaishnava, Shaiva, Shakta) each place a different figure at the centre.

These are objects of living devotion for hundreds of millions of people. The atlas records each figure's myths, iconography, consorts and vehicles, and the domains and correspondences attached to them, describing what the tradition holds rather than adjudicating among its schools.