A set of devotional practices that emerged in South India from the sixth century CE and spread to north India by the fifteenth century CE. As an orthodox tradition, it focused on personal devotion, individual worship and spiritual fulfilment beyond the norms of caste or gender. It developed around cults of several deities, prominently Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti.
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A Tibetan Buddhist monastic order, founded by Je Tsongkhapa in the early fifteenth century. Tsongkhapa along with his disciples founded…
Meaning “divine cloth” in Sanskrit, it is an upper body garment. In Jainism, it is believed that the deity Indra…
Also known as Yamantaka, he is a deity considered to be the destroyer or conqueror of death in Buddhism and…
The anthropomorphic representation of divine weapons in the Hindu pantheon. These personified weapons are depicted either in human form or…
The lunar deity in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In Sanskrit, and several South Asian languages, the word is also used…
Rishabha Deva is the first of the twenty four Jaina Tirthankaras (great spiritual teachers). In Jaina mythology, he was the…
The tutelary deity of a family or a clan. The term is derived from the Sanskrit words kul, meaning "family"…
A bodhisattva in the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions of Buddhism, he is primarily associated with the Akshobhya Buddha. Iconographically, he…