Walk into almost any bookstore today, in India or abroad, and you will find shelves labelled “Hindu Mythology.” Browse online retailers, and the category appears everywhere. The Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, stories of Shiva, Krishna, Durga, Kali – all grouped together under a single modern label.
Most people rarely stop to question it. The phrase has become so normalized that it feels natural. But the more I began studying Indian sacred narratives seriously, the more I realized that this language is not as neutral as it appears. The term “Hindu mythology” did not emerge from the traditions themselves. It emerged largely through colonial-era frameworks that attempted to classify Indian knowledge systems using European categories of religion, history, mythology, and philosophy.
That distinction matters. Because language does not simply describe civilizations. It shapes how civilizations are understood, both by outsiders and by the people inheriting them. This is not about rejecting scholarship or becoming hostile to Western academic traditions. Some of the most important work on Indian texts has come from scholars across the world. The issue is something subtler. What happens when one civilizational framework becomes the default lens through which all others are interpreted? And what gets lost in translation when categories developed in one historical context are imposed upon another?
The Problem Is Not the Word “Mythology” Alone
To be clear, mythology in its original sense is not an insult. Across cultures, mythology refers to systems of sacred narratives through which civilizations explore existence, morality, cosmology, power, suffering, creation, destruction, and meaning. Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Egyptian mythology – these are understood as narrative frameworks carrying symbolic and philosophical significance. The problem emerges because modern usage of the word “myth” increasingly became associated with falsehood. People casually say – “That’s just a myth”, “It’s a myth that…”, “Those are myths people believed before science.” Over time, the word began carrying an implicit dismissal.
And once that happens, calling living sacred traditions “mythology” starts shaping perception differently. For many practitioners, the Ramayana is not merely an imaginative tale comparable to fiction. The Mahabharata is not experienced simply as symbolic entertainment. The Devi Mahatmyam is not approached merely as fantasy literature. For many practitioners, these texts are not approached merely as stories, but as part of a living philosophical and spiritual tradition. Reducing all of this into a single category called “mythology” can flatten the complexity of what these narratives truly are.
How Colonial Frameworks Shaped the Category
When British scholars and administrators encountered Indian traditions during colonial rule, they faced something difficult to classify through existing European categories. India did not fit neatly into familiar frameworks. There was no single founder. No single canonical book. No centralized church. No uniform doctrine. Instead, there existed thousands of years of layered traditions -Vedic thought, Upanishadic philosophy, temple traditions, devotional movements, ritual systems, oral narratives, yogic traditions, tantric traditions, regional deities, metaphysical schools, epics, cosmologies, and philosophical inquiry existing simultaneously. Colonial scholarship attempted to organize this vast civilizational complexity into categories more familiar to European intellectual structures. “Hinduism” gradually became consolidated as a singular religious category, and its narratives were increasingly grouped under “Hindu mythology.” Some of this was administrative. Some academic. Some theological. Some shaped by genuine curiosity. And some undeniably shaped by colonial assumptions about what constituted “civilized” versus “primitive” knowledge.
The issue is not that all Western scholarship was malicious. That would be intellectually dishonest. Many scholars preserved texts that may otherwise have been lost. Many engaged Indian traditions seriously and respectfully. But colonial frameworks still influenced how Indian traditions came to be translated, categorized, and globally understood. And those categories continue shaping perception even today.
Itihasa and Purana: Older Indian Frameworks
One reason this conversation matters is because Indian traditions already had their own categories for these narratives. The Ramayana and Mahabharata were traditionally understood as Itihasa. The Sanskrit term is often translated as “thus indeed it was.” This does not map perfectly onto modern Western notions of empirical history. But neither does it mean fictional fabrication.
Itihasa occupies a different space altogether – somewhere between civilizational memory, philosophical reflection, and sacred narrative.
Similarly, the Puranas were not simply “myths” in the modern dismissive sense of the word. They were theological, cosmological, symbolic, and philosophical texts attempting to explain reality, consciousness, creation, destruction, cyclical time, and the relationship between the human and the cosmos.
Indian knowledge traditions often approached existence more holistically than modern disciplinary divisions allow. Knowledge often moved fluidly across categories.
That older civilizational approach becomes difficult to fully understand when everything is translated simply as “mythology.”
Why This Conversation Still Matters
Some people may wonder why any of this matter today. After all, language evolves. And that is true. But language also shapes emotional relationship. When younger generations repeatedly hear their traditions described primarily as mythology in the popular “fictional” sense, something subtle happens. Sacred narratives begin feeling culturally ornamental rather than intellectually alive. They become associated with childhood stories instead of philosophical inquiry.
At the same time, many Western religious narratives continue receiving different linguistic treatment – scripture, theology, sacred history, revelation. This creates an uneven psychological hierarchy even when unintended.
The issue is not about demanding special treatment for Indian traditions. It is about recognizing that different civilizations developed different frameworks for preserving meaning, memory, ethics, and metaphysical understanding. And perhaps those frameworks deserve to be engaged on their own terms before being compressed into externally imposed categories.
This Is Not About Rejecting Science or Modern Inquiry
One misunderstanding that often emerges in these conversations is the assumption that questioning the term “mythology” means rejecting modern scholarship, history, archaeology, or science. I do not see it that way at all.
Science remains one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Historical method matters. Evidence matters. Rational inquiry matters. But civilizations also preserved knowledge in ways that were not purely empirical. Ancient narratives often carried multiple layers simultaneously such as symbolic, psychological, philosophical, ritual, ethical, cosmological, and sometimes historical.
Modern societies sometimes struggle with layered thinking because we increasingly expect things to be either literally factual or completely meaningless. Older traditions often operated differently. A narrative could carry symbolic truth, psychological insight, sacred memory, philosophical inquiry, and civilizational continuity all at once.
This is one reason I believe these traditions continue enduring. They are not surviving merely because of nostalgia. They survive because generations continue finding meaning inside them.
The Deeper Issue: Who Gets to Define Knowledge?
At its core, this conversation is really about epistemology – who gets to define what counts as knowledge. For centuries, European intellectual frameworks became globally dominant through colonial expansion. Categories developed in Europe were treated as universal – religion, mythology, history, philosophy, science.
But older civilizations did not always organize reality through the same conceptual divisions.
Indian traditions frequently approached existence more holistically. Inquiry into consciousness, mathematics, astronomy, ethics, ritual, language, ecology, metaphysics, and cosmology often coexisted rather than being rigidly separated. Recognizing this does not require rejecting modern categories entirely. It simply requires acknowledging that they are not the only possible frameworks through which human beings have understood existence.
And perhaps part of intellectual maturity is learning how to engage multiple frameworks without immediately forcing one entirely into the language of another.
So What Should We Say Instead?
I do not think this requires linguistic policing or outrage every time someone says “Hindu mythology.” In many contexts, people use the term casually without dismissive intent. But greater precision can still be helpful.
Sometimes “Indic sacred narratives,” “Itihasa,” “Puranic traditions,” “Dharmic narratives,” or simply the names of the texts themselves may communicate more accurately. Instead of – “the myth of Rama”, one might simply say – “the Ramayana narrative”, “the story of Rama”, or “the Itihasa tradition”. Similarly, the Vedas are not the same as the Puranas, the Upanishads are not the same as devotional folklore, Tantra is not the same as epic literature. Greater specificity preserves complexity.
And complexity matters when discussing civilizations that evolved across thousands of years.
Why This Matters to Me Personally
A large part of my own work has involved revisiting sacred narratives that were either simplified, dismissed, or flattened over time, especially feminine traditions within Indic thought.
The Goddess traditions, for instance, are often reduced to exotic imagery or “mythological stories,” while their philosophical, psychological, and metaphysical dimensions receive far less attention.
But texts like the Devi Mahatmyam or Devi Bhagavata are doing far more than telling imaginative stories. They are exploring power, consciousness, creation, destruction, time, embodiment, illusion, devotion, and the nature of reality itself. To engage these traditions seriously requires more than belief or disbelief. It requires symbolic literacy. Philosophical openness. Historical awareness. And sometimes the humility to admit that older civilizations may have been asking profound questions in languages very different from our own.
Conclusion
The term “Hindu mythology” did not emerge in a vacuum. It developed through historical encounters shaped partly by colonial scholarship, translation, categorization, and the global dominance of European intellectual frameworks. That does not mean every use of the term today is malicious. Nor does it mean modern scholarship should be rejected outright. But it does mean we should become more conscious of the language we inherit and the assumptions embedded within it.
Words shape memory. Words shape legitimacy. Words shape how future generations relate to their own traditions. And perhaps this is the deeper point – civilizations are not preserved only through monuments and texts. They are preserved through the frameworks people use to understand them. The question, then, is not whether ancient narratives should be approached critically. Of course they should. The question is whether we are willing to approach them with enough intellectual openness to recognize that older cultures may have understood truth, memory, symbolism, and meaning differently from modern categories altogether. Because once we begin seeing that, these narratives stop appearing as relics of a forgotten past. They begin revealing themselves as living conversations humanity is still having with itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
The phrase was created by British colonial scholars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a way of categorizing Indian sacred texts using European academic frameworks. The word “Hindu” itself was not originally a religious term but a geographical one. “Mythology” was borrowed from the treatment of Greek and Roman traditions. Neither word was chosen by the people who preserved these texts.
The epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are called Itihasa, meaning “it happened thus.” The cosmological and theological texts are called Purana, meaning ancient knowledge. Other categories include Shastra for disciplinary knowledge and Katha for philosophical narratives. These are more precise and more accurate than the borrowed category of “mythology.”
In Western academic terms, this is a contested question. In its own tradition, it is Itihasa, a category that does not map neatly onto either “verified historical record” or “fiction.” Itihasa means the narrative preserves something that occurred, carrying philosophical and ethical truth through the way it is told. The binary of mythology versus history is a Western frame that does not fit the text accurately.
The word “mythology” in everyday English carries the implication of falsehood, and this is precisely why the phrase is inadequate. The texts in question are understood within the tradition as carrying genuine philosophical, cosmological, and ethical truth, not as fiction or primitive belief. Whether that truth is “empirical” in a modern scientific sense is a separate question from whether it is real.
Because language shapes how we engage with what it names. A tradition called “mythology” is approached differently from one called by its own name. The frameworks we carry determine what we are able to see, and borrowed categories carry borrowed assumptions. The tradition’s own language is more precise and more honest about what the tradition actually contains.
Itihasa and Purana, where precision is possible. Hindu sacred narratives or Dharmic texts, where a broader English phrase is needed. Specific names, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Devi Bhagavata Purana, where the reference is to a particular text. The goal is not to make conversation difficult but to use language that does justice to what is being described.
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About the Author
Priyanka Sharma Kaintura
Priyanka Sharma Kaintura is a mythology activist, author, and speaker dedicated to separating myth from mythology and excavating narratives buried by colonialism and patriarchy. After two decades in corporate communication, she now writes full-time, focusing especially on the Goddess tradition. Her books include Mahadevi: The Unseen Truth Behind Existence and My Jiffies: Narration of Moments, Unadulterated and Unpackaged.
She believes that accurate communication is the plinth for most of what goes right in the world, and that reclaiming our linguistic frameworks is essential to reclaiming our civilizational memory.
