India Gods

Some of the important India gods.

India gods can only be found in Hinduism. Other religions don’t have them. Buddha, for example, is not a god, not even a son of god. In fact Buddhism is not even a religion in the classical sense. However, to complicate things, many Hindus consider Buddha (whose name originally was Siddharta Gautama) as an incarnation of Vishnu, one of India’s gods.

Vishnu (also known as Narayan(a)) is one of the important India gods. He has had a number of incarnations of which one is still to come. Some of his incarnations are also well known in the West: Rama and Krishna. Vishnu, Rama and Krishna are venerated by the “Vaishnavas”. Another main group in Hinduism are the “Saivites”, who have Shiva as their main god.

Siva (also known as Mahadeva, Maheshwara and many other names) is one of the most important India gods. Others are: Ganesh(a) the elephant headed god and son of Shiva, Muruga (the other son of Shiva) Parvati (or Shakti) is the wife of Shiva, Hanuman (the ape god), Lakshmi (wife of Vishnu) Saraswati (goddess of wisdom) and Sita wife of Rama.

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