Hindu polytheism

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Part One: Philosophy. 1. The theory of polytheism. 2. The nature of the ultimate. 3. The cosmic being. Part Two: The gods of the Vedas. 4. The cosmic sacrifice. 5. The thirty-three gods. 6. The spheres and their deities. 7. The divinities of the sphere of space. 8. The Adityas, the sovereign principles. 9. Other Vedic deities. 10. Gods and anti-gods. Part Three: The trinity. 11. Visnu, the pervader. 12. The image of Visnu. 13. The avatars, or incarnations, of Visnu. 14. The minor incarnations of Visnu. 15. Siva, the lord of sleep. 16. The forms of Rudra-Siva. 17. The image of Siva. 18. The Linga. 19. Brahma, the immense being. Part Four: The divine power (Sakti) as the goddess. 20. Sakti, the all-pervading energy. 21. The consorts of the three gods. 22. The ten objects-of-transcendent-knowledge. 23. Some other aspects of the goddess. Part Five: Secondary gods. 24. The sons of Siva. 25. Minor gods and genii. 26. Other deities. Part Six: The representation and the worship of deities. 27. The representation of deities. 28. The thought forms, or mantras. 29. The yantras, or magic diagrams. 30. The images (murti) of deities. 31. The worship of deities. 32. Ritual. Appendix: Sanskrit texts

'...attempts to explain the significance of the most prominent Hindu deities in the way in which they are envisaged by the Hindus themselves...a coherent, all-inclusive, ever-revolving knowledge with its roots in ancient systems which tried to express, more or less successfully, the complex structure of the cosmos...'

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