Indian culture

Introduction

We all know that Muslims and Christians believe in one God but are this same for Hindus? The Hindu religion is a mystery to many people in the West.

Do Hindus worship one god or many and why?BrahmanHindus believe in one god called Brahman. To Hindus, Brahman is the superior god. He is the one who created everything and the one who has no specific form but is everywhere in people, plants and animals.

Discussion

For Hindus and others it is not always easy to think of a god as formless so in this case they use images of Brahman to help them worship. Because of this, Hindus believe that Brahman can be worshipped in different forms therefore there are hundreds of thousands of gods and goddesses present in the Hindu religion.

If we know that Hindus worship one god then how can they worship many gods? There is only one answer to this question.

Each god or goddess represents some aspect of Brahman. By saying this all of the gods and goddesses put together actually make up this one superior god, Brahman. This means that although Hindus worship many gods they are only worshipping Brahman but with a different name, appearance and form(Narayanan pp.56-63).

Other gods

However, not all Hindus worship all forms of Brahman. There are many different religions inside Hinduism and each one worships different forms of Brahman. The most important gods include Brahma, who created the world, Vishnu, who keeps the world safe, and Shiva, who will destroy the world in the future. Brahma is not worshipped in the same way as the other two gods as it is believed that his work has already been done.

Hindus are often placed into three main groups according to which forms of Brahman they worship. One group who worship Vishnu and his incarnations, ...