After I started reading up all this ancient history and creating this site, I realised one or two things.
That many Gods were (or looked) human. That they did great and admirable things and that they had profound ideas and they influenced humanity.
People selected one or more of these wonderful people, whether it is Sankaracharya or Jamabavantha or Viswakarma or Hanuman or Krishna or Valmiki or Guru Nanak or Rama or Buddha or Indra… or whoever else., and worship them as the eternal God who will illuminate their minds, bless them and protect them.
They were all the heroic ancestors of the Indian people, whatever the current religion of any modern Indian may be. For eg a person may be a Sikh or a Christian or a Buddhist today but (s)he is likely to be a direct descendant of Indra or Krishna or Maitreyi and not even know it!
Sri Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that He will strengthen our faith in whatever we choose and answer our prayers through that faith. Swami Vivekananda said that we project our ideals on to something or someone and bow before it.
I have recently found that Ravana who many Indians consider a villain, is considered a Bodhisattva by some Sri Lankans. So even the converse of ‘your villain is my God’ is true!
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