Durga
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Durga is a form of the Hindu deity known as the Great Goddess, Devi, and is also one form of Shiva’s wife Parvati. The war-like goddess is a sensually beautiful, bejeweled figure and is also the mistress of life and death.
The Arts of India to 1500 CE
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The history of art in India goes back thousands of years. Traditional arts are also still living cultural traditions essential to rituals and religious practices, and are integrated into daily life. Many motifs in Indian art have survived without significant change over millennia.
The Cult of Shiva in South India
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
In India from at least the 5th century onward, the major Hindu gods were Vishnu and Shiva. Shiva is a very complex deity. The god of death and rebirth, Shiva is sometimes imagined in his terrible aspect, as Lord of Destruction, who meditates among the ashes of corpses on a cremation ground. He is a supreme yogi, an ascetic of great powers, with wild hair and an ash-smeared body, who transcends ordinary reality.
Vishnu
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Vishnu, the invincible protector and preserver of the universe, serves as a hero figure who reestablishes cosmic order in many Hindu stories. He embodies the characteristics of goodness and mercy. When the balance of the universe is disturbed by evil or destructive forces, Vishnu will prevail over the spiritually ignorant demons and restore dharma or moral order.
Hinduism
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Hinduism is a complex system of beliefs. It incorporates many religious texts and many local and village gods, along with the principle triad of the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Hinduism includes the belief that opposing forces are aspects of one eternal truth, the belief in reincarnation, and the practice of good deeds in hopes of being reborn into a higher caste.
Cupisnique
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The Cupisnique culture flourished from ca. 1000 to 200 BCE along what is now Peru's Pacific Coast, with its cultural center in a small, dry valley north of the Chicama Valley, Peru. Cupisnique had a distinctive style of adobe clay architecture, but shared artistic styles and religious symbols with Chavín (Chavín de Huántar).
Paracas
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The Paracas culture is named after a desert peninsula on the southern coast of Peru. The deserts of the Paracas peninsula, whose name means “sand falling like rain,” have preserved fragile objects deposited in cemeteries some 2,000 years ago. In the late 1920s, Peruvian archaeologists recovered more than 400 textile-wrapped funerary bundles from Paracas excavations.
Inca (Inka)
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The vast Inca (Inka) Empire expanded from the 15th to the early 16th century to encompass present-day Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and parts of Chile and Argentina. The Inca called this empire “Tahuantinsuyo” (Tawantinsuyu), or “land of the four parts,” defining regions north, east, south, and west of the capital, or seat of the king—Cuzco (Quzqu). According to Inca history, the ruler Pachacutic established the tenets of Inca imperialism, beginning with military success in the early 1400s.
Sicán (Lambayeque)
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The Sicán (or Lambayeque) culture flourished on the north coast of Peru from about 700 to 1370 CE. The name Sicán was coined in the 1980s based on the local Muchik language term Sian, meaning "house" or "temple" (-An ) "of the moon" (Si-), recorded by Spanish chroniclers present in this region during the 16th century.
Wari (Huari)
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
In the history of the central Andes, the Middle Horizon (600–1000 CE) was dominated by two cultures, Tiahuanaco (Tiwanaku) and Huari (Wari). The names of the cultures derive from two imperial cities that flourished in the central and southern highlands—Huari near the modern city of Ayacucho in present-day Peru, and Tiahuanaco on the edge of Lake Titicaca in what is now northwestern Bolivia.