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I'm a Hindu by religion. And I really respect my religion like I respect others. But from my childhood, I'm listening a lot of stories about Hindu Gods and Goddess which are interrelated to each other. But I'm thinking who wrote these stories, and any man/woman who first knew these stories, how did he/she get to know, because he/she was not God. So I want to know how and from where these stories came to mankind from God.

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+1. Welcome to the site. A very interesting question indeed. – Sardathrion Oct 30 '12 at 9:39
@Sardathrion thanks, and yes it's really interesting 1 – Shirish Herwade Oct 30 '12 at 9:46
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You do understand that we deal with history here? History is a science that attempts to determine a one, single, coherent chain of events. It uses many old texts, without presuming any priority among them; they are equal in the beginning. Next, texts that don't stick to a version supported by the majority, we dump them into a large bag called "ahistoric", so they wouldn't bother us anymore. This is the nature of this science. You can use the texts for quite different purposes, but these are not called "history"; they are simply something else. – kubanczyk Oct 30 '12 at 10:09
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sorry, but just now a edit to this question is rejected by me. Because in that edit fist 2 lines of question was removed. And I can't afford that, I live in India, where lot of people are Hindus, so I think those lines are protecting me :) – Shirish Herwade Oct 30 '12 at 14:22

1 Answer

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Many mythological stories we hear today have an oral tradition, that is, they were never explicitly written down anytime, but passed from generations through word of mouth.

To get some idea of "when", the Vedic age is approximately believed to be from 500 BC-150 BC and it is possible that the characters of Gods and the stories may have taken shape around that period.

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thank you for the answer – Shirish Herwade Oct 31 '12 at 5:31
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...then again, there are some common features between some of the Hindu gods and some of the gods and mythology found in the Greek and Norse pantheons. A common Indo-European origin could put some of it further back than 3700 BCE. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion – T.E.D. Oct 31 '12 at 16:28

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