An episode in Hindu mythology central to the Vaishnava sect, it narrates the tale of how Vishnu came down to the earth and rescued the elephant Gajendra from the clutches of a crocodile, thus freeing him from the cycle of birth and death. The title of the story, which appears in the Bhagavata Purana, literally translates to “the liberation of Gajendra.
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A Vaishnavite devotional cult that revolves around the worship of the Hindu deity Krishna as a child, in the form…
Minor female semi-divine, half-human half-serpent creatures in Buddhist, Jain and Hindu mythology, and the female counterpart to nagas. They are…
Meaning “dance of bliss,” it is a cosmic dance performed by the Hindu deity, Shiva, in his Nataraja form.
A group of 275 shrines dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva and concentrated in southern India. They are mentioned in…
Celestial figure of a young, beautiful woman in Indian art and mythology, often associated with nature. The Sanskrit term madanika…
Within Jainism, they were the daughters of the first Tirthankara Rishabhanatha and princesses in the kingdom of Ayodhya. According to…
One of the thirty-two lakshanas within Buddhist iconography, the urna is depicted as a dot or a circular curl of…
Any of a group of mother goddesses (matrika, Sanskrit, ‘divine mother’) mainly in Hinduism, especially in Shakta and Shaiva cults;…