While
researching Hinduism, I found it to be an extremely interesting religion. In
Hinduism, all gods are emanations of one all creating god called Brahman but
there are almost no temples dedicated to him at all. His power is broken up
into three high gods; Brahma (god of creation), Vishnu (god of preservation of
life), and Shiva (god of destruction). The Hindu people dedicate more temples
to the lower rankings of gods to appeal to the emanations of the high gods, for
which there are at least 9 of for each. One of the more popular emanations for
Shiva is Ganesh, his son. The story was that after a long period of being away
from his wife Parvati, he returned to find her in bed with another man and in
anger cut the strangers head off. It wasn’t until after the deed that he
realized it was his son and regretting his haste, he promised to bring his son
back to life with the help of the next animal he saw. An elephant appeared at
that moment and now, any statue or image of Ganesh is a human body with an animal
head. At the temples where Ganesh is worshiped there is no shrine to worship
him. Pilgrims bathe his statue with milk and hope to gain prosperity and a new
beginning.
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