What is a Deva?

Hindu God Deva

In modern Hinduism the word ‘Deva’ is generally used to mean a god. Specifically, however, a Deva is a certain type of divine or supernatural being, but not all Devas would make sense to call gods and not all Gods are technically Devas.

In the specific sense, Devas are a race of beings primarily native to Swarga Loka (a heavenly overworld), one of many ‘supernatural’ races in the Hindu multiverse. There are 330 million Devas, ten million in service to each of the thirty-three Trayastrinshata Devas, the highest and most powerful of their kind. While these thirty-three top-tier Devas are certainly gods (in a polytheistic sense of the term), the lowest-tier Devas are more like what most people might think of as powerful spirits, local village Gramadevas and the like.

However the primary Gods of Hinduism – Ganesha, Shiva, Parvati, Vishnu, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Brahma, etc. – are not technically Devas in the specific sense, but are called Devatas. They, being perfect forms of the all-encompassing Supreme Being, are infinitely superior to the Devas, who are finite and fallible creatures, though still far superior to the vast majority of humans.

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