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Why are Hindu gods/goddesses fat and sometimes blue skinned?

Hindu deities like Vishnu, Lakshmi, Shiva and Ganesha all are overweight and some of them have blue skin. I always wonder why?
Now that made sense… no wonder why medieval kings and queens aren’t on the skinny side with all of these big clothes and feasts

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11 Responses to “Why are Hindu gods/goddesses fat and sometimes blue skinned?”

  1. Fishbone Jim said :

    they are all having a stroke or a heart attack

  2. ~I <3 Music Boxes~ said :

    Vishnu is depicted with a blue skin. The colour blue symbolises the infinite expansion of the blue sky and the blue ocean. Vishnu holds a conch or sankha which symbolises sounds of creation. In another hand, he holds the cakra or the wheel of time. Sometimes the cakra is called Sudarsana Cakra. “Su” means good and “darshan” means vision. This signifies that when a devotee looks towards God with a sense of surrender, God will turn towards him. Thus the cakra is a weapon with a mission to destroy ego and grant “darshan”.

  3. Father Tucker said :

    In most cultures of the past, (and some in the present day) the bag-o’-bones look wasn’t so hot. Think of what a little “girth” would represent to people who didn’t want to be starving, but didn’t have much choice in the matter.

    As for the blue skin, I’m not sure it had any special significance apart from the “otherworldly” impression. In Christianity, they say the god made man in his image. In most other religions, people set themselves well apart from the gods. They’re a little less arrogant, perhaps.

  4. Well, 'tis my name. said :

    People see weird stuff when they hallucinate, like a guy who is the son of god, but he is god, and he is also a spirit.

  5. Andy F said :

    You’re right about the blue skin, but I don’t think it’s right to call Hindu gods & goddesses “fat.”

    I think “fat” is partly a cultural determination.

    Look at some of the Renaissance paintings of the gods & goddesses of Greece & Rome sometime. I think you’ll find that some of the goddesses – e.g. in Botticelli’s painting of Venus rising from the waves — are far from being anorexic. There was a different esthetic preference at work than the one that the American fashion industry is pushing today.

    BTW – have you ever read Lincoln Steffens on “conspicuous consumption”? Steffens thought that in ancient times when food was sometimes scarcer than it is today, the standard of female beauty called for a heavier physique than today: being heavier was a sign that you were eating well — a sign that you were rich, powerful, and beloved. Whereas being slender would put it question your economic welfare.

    Steffens thought that in American society by around 1900, though, rich men liked to have skinnier wives, partly to demonstrate to the world that these women weren’t capable of doing much heavy labor; they were purely ornamental. It was still an upper-class way of showing off, but under different economic circumstances.

  6. ghostmachine241 said :

    Thousand’s of years ago, the weight of a person was viewed differently. Girth was an attribute of the wealthy, fed, and content. The Gods, possessing boundless knowledge and spiritual wealth, are not surprisingly depicted this way.

    The physical depiction will vary depending on the culture. Buddhism, Hinduism, Zaoism, etc., all have the depicted of portly men and women. In western religions such as Christianity, their leader was depicted not as a wealthy king or leader, but as a common carpenter. The perspective is key here.

  7. Baruch Osama said :

    Because the deities they worship portray that they aren’t human but a type of sky-like substance….or they come from the sky…i cant give u extreme detail but u should research it.And the fat is sybolism an abundance….

  8. Corey said :

    Shiva is sometimes shown as light blue (or sometimes just his neck) because he swallowed poison to rescue the other gods during a battle between the gods and the demons.

    Vishnu and some of his avatars are blue because blue represents all-pervasiveness, like the endless sky or ocean.

    I don’t really think I’ve seen them generally shown as overweight. Just not emaciated like Jesus on the crucifix. Except Ganesha. He’s a little on the heavy side, probably on account of being given an elephant head.

  9. Sowmya said :

    Ganesha is overweight for the same reason as a lot of other overweight people – because he is said to be fond of sweets. The other deities are not typically overweight, but your perceptions of what sizes define overweight may be different from those of the artists who create the images of the deities. He is NOT generally depicted as being blue, but more often as skin-coloured. An artist may however sometimes use blue as a approximation to the greyish colour of elephants (Ganesha has the head of an elephant).

    Vishnu (and his avatar Krishna) are depicted with blue skin. Please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu#Iconography to understand more.

    Shiva is often depicted as an ascetic, which means that his body would be marked with ash and dust, as is typical of ascetics. This would render his body greyish or whitish, and again, blue may be used by an artist as an approximation. It is not a logical approximation though, because Shiva’s throat is supposed to be blue as the result of drinking poison to save the world (according to one legend detailed here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halahala ).

    Lakshmi is the divine consort of Vishnu. Amongst other things, she is supposed to be the personification of endless beauty and grace, and while more often depicted as skin coloured, some depictions may also use blue skin (blue being the colour of infinity and eternity).

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