Hinduism is the third largest religion in the world with over 900 million Hindus worldwide, Hinduism has no original founder and originated over 4,000 years ago , being the oldest religion in the world. Hinduism is known for its Gods/Goddesses that are worshipped, there is one God but also millions of Gods that Hindus follow, and this is a difficult concept to understand. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Hinduism is known as a polytheistic religion since polytheism is “the belief in many gods” (Smart, 2017) and monotheism is the “belief in the existence of one God, or in the unity of God' (Baaren, 2016) In many respects, Hinduism may be a monotheistic religion, since the Vedas speak of only one God but with many different names, and the different names of the deities have their own personal qualities that distinguish them as a deity singular, but they are all one God. However, Hinduism is primarily known as a polytheistic religion because there are many references to millions of Gods/Goddesses within the religion as well as there are aspects of creation " (Danielou, 1964). Hindus worship different types of deities, which makes they are all separate from each other since deities can be classified as different beings. The complexity of Hindu polytheism is due to the number of attempts to explain universal laws and the laws of nature from which the universe could have arisen (Danielou, 1964). Because of the Hindus' attempts to explain the law of the universe, many deities have been recovered and created, just to try to get answers as to why the world exists. The multiple Gods/Goddesses of Hinduism were created and taken from ancient texts that have important meaning for Hinduism, there are the three main sacred texts in which the deities can be described; The Vedas, the epics and the Puranas. It is from these texts that the different deities were established. The Vedic deities were created and belonged to the ancient Arayan period who were prominent in 1700-700 BC and many deities from this region were also found in Greek mythology, and there are many similarities between the Greek and Hindu deities of this period. It is known that perhaps both types of deities may have been the same, just with different names, similarities between both deities include Indra and Zeus; Indra is known to be the king of the heavens and one of these best known symbols is the lightning bolt, Indra is also associated with weather such as rain, wind and storms. Zeus is also known from Greek mythology to be a weather god who can control meteorological aspects, he is the type of Olympian Gods/Goddesses in Greek history and similarly has a lightning bolt as a symbol which includes both Gods who They symbolize power and authority. The Vedic Gods were established due to the combination of ideas that were brought to India by the Arayans, it is known that there are 33 Vedic Gods all together which all include descriptions that are intended to bring a benefit to the material world for the Hindus, so they could worshiping them and dedicating one's life to them, deities were visualized as having both animal and human forms into which they are capable of transforming. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get Custom EssayAfter the Aryans invaded India, the ancient Vedic religion underwent some changes that would affect the deities of the religion, as the changes took place, the deities were known to become concerned that they were not being worshiped and because of this For this reason, the deities changed their functions and lost their prestige. (Mitchell, 1982)