Hindu Mythology Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which descent of Vishnu is still in the future, prophesied to appear at the very end of the present dark age riding a white horse and wielding a blazing sword, to destroy the wicked and begin a new age of righteousness?

Question 2

Which eldest of the Pandava brothers, a son of the god of righteousness, was famed for never telling a lie and for an unbending sense of duty, yet gambled away his kingdom, his brothers, himself and their shared wife in a rigged game of dice?

Question 3

Which god is fire itself in all its forms, from the household hearth to the sacrificial altar to the sun and lightning, and acts as the messenger who carries offerings up to the other gods by consuming them in his flames?

Question 4

Which god is described as the creator who brings the universe into being at the start of each cosmic cycle, and is usually shown with four faces looking to the four directions, four arms holding a water pot, a rosary, a ladle and the Vedas, and seated on a lotus or riding a swan?

Question 5

What is the name of the vast joint effort in which the gods and the demons, for once working together, wrapped a mountain in the serpent king as a rope and pulled it back and forth to spin the cosmic ocean until the nectar of immortality rose from it?

Question 6

What is the name of the oldest and most authoritative body of Hindu scripture, four collections of hymns, chants, ritual formulas and spells, composed in an archaic form of Sanskrit and preserved for many centuries by exact oral memorisation before being written down?

Question 7

Which magnificent white elephant, often shown with several tusks or several trunks, rose from the ocean when it was churned and became the mount of Indra, the king of the gods?

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About Hindu Mythology

Hindu mythology is not one book but a library built up over three thousand years, from the hymns of the Vedas through the two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, to the eighteen Puranas and beyond. This quiz covers it in eighty questions. Each describes a deity, an avatar, a hero, a demon, a sage, a text, a place or a concept, and asks you to name it from four choices, then explains the story, the family links, and how the figure is understood and worshipped. The traditions differ among themselves, and where they do the most widely told version is given and the main variants noted; the tone is that of retelling the stories, not of ruling on belief, and the Vaishnava, Shaiva and Shakta streams are treated evenhandedly.

The first pack is the principal gods and the framework: the creator, preserver and destroyer, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, grouped as the Trimurti; the goddesses Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, Durga and Kali; Ganesha and Hanuman; the two most beloved avatars, Rama and Krishna; the older gods of the elements, Indra, Agni, Vayu, Varuna, Yama and Surya; and the river goddess Ganga and the bull Nandi.

The second pack works through the rest of the cast. The ten principal descents of Vishnu, from the fish and the tortoise to the future horseman Kalki. The Mahabharata: the five Pandavas and the hundred Kauravas, Draupadi, Karna, Bhishma, Drona, the dice game and the Bhagavad Gita. The Ramayana: Sita, Ravana, Lakshmana, Jatayu, Vibhishana. The great sages Valmiki, Vyasa, Narada, Vishwamitra and Agastya. And more deities and beings: the war god Kartikeya, the eagle Garuda, the elephant Airavata, the love god Kama, the moon Chandra, the wealth god Kubera, the earth goddess, the stern planet-deity Shani and the cursed immortal Ashwatthama.

The third pack steps back to the big picture. The churning of the ocean of milk and the nectar it produced; the layers of scripture, the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Puranas; the four declining world-ages; the key ideas of dharma, karma, samsara and moksha, and the pair Brahman and Atman; the sacred syllable Om; the cosmic mountain Meru and the real mountain Kailash; the heavens Vaikuntha and Svarga and the hells of Naraka; the celestial apsaras and the serpent nagas; and the cosmic form Krishna reveals in the Gita. Because a captioned painting almost always gives the answer away, images are used only where a site photo or an ambiguous carving does not, and everything has been checked against standard reference works.