The gods of India

For the traveler to India, it is both fascinating and disconcerting to see the colourful variety of temples and the gods worshipped in them. This colorful diversity, however, makes it considerably more difficult to understand: What do you do with such an abundance of deities? This volume provides a compact, comprehensible and informative overview of India's world of gods. It provides access to a way of thinking that is foreign to us and helps us to discover the one unifying element in the diversity of Hindu traditions, which can be expressed as follows: "The One in Many Faces". This may give the traveler to India a better understanding of what he will see on his journey. At the same time, however, this volume should be seen as a - modest - contribution to the dialog between religions. India's diverse world of gods is a fascinating mosaic of ideas and traditions within an overall concept of living religion. Striking and mostly colorful pictures - almost all from the author's archive - and well-founded but compact explanations of individual deities and India's religious practice provide an introduction to the colorful world of Hinduism and its gods and goddesses, behind which lies the primordial ground of the cosmos, the Alone