Talking About Food, Don’t Forget Hinduism

Series: What can foods tell u about? - ABOUT RELIGIONS 🇳🇵

👉 Food plays a major role in every religion

If you want to know what someone believes in, just look at what they eat! But when food appears everywhere — from home-cooked meals to temple offerings, from ritual platters rubbed directly onto worshippers’ skin, from the beginning to the end of the year through countless festivals (at least once every month!) — that’s when I realized: this happens in Hinduism!

🍚 Foods covering temples

I was always curious whenever I passed by Hindu temples. They’re always scattered with water, rice, and all kinds of offerings. The statues are never sparkling clean and perched up high like in other religions. Instead, they’re placed on the ground or at human eye level. Worshippers come with (or buy) a ritual combo: rice, marigold flowers, candles, oil wicks, and so on. Hinduism is the oldest known religion in human history, so maybe that’s why its practices are so… wild.

Hindu temples are always scattered with water, rice grains, and all sorts of offerings.

Animal sacrifice rituals

The most striking is the practice of live animal sacrifice during the major Hindu festival in October — Gangaur. The animals usually offered are goats and buffaloes. The knife must be big and sharp, the slash swift and clean so that the head is severed in one blow, and the fresh blood must bathe the statues and flood through temples of all sizes. During this season, military teams are sent to temples to perform the sacrifices, and people donate the animals they’ve raised for the ritual. Afterward, the animal’s head is presented to high-ranking officials or military leaders… to eat, while the body is divided among the locals to take home and cook.

Animal sacrifice during a major Hindu festival in October, Gangaur

Even the religion’s symbols are made from foods!

🕉️ Hindu symbols, carried on people’s bodies, are also made from food! Like the Tilka or Bindi — the red dot worn on the forehead during weddings or worship, alongside countless other marks I can’t even name.

• Tilka is made from sacrificial ash, cow dung, wood powder, turmeric, red lead, and clay.
• Bindi is made from natural herbs (turmeric, sindoor — I don’t even know the Vietnamese name for that). What’s cool is both men and women wear these symbols, paired with traditional clothes and various types of headwear depending on their group or caste (which, by the way, is a fascinating topic we’ll get into later).

People gather around the Guru to receive the Tilka mark, made from the ashes of sacrificed animals, cow dung, wood powder, turmeric, red lead, and clay.

The intact culture

I have to say: Nepal is the first country I’ve visited where traditional culture is this intact and alive. Right there on the city streets, in the middle of the capital, you’ll see grandmas, uncles, aunties, and young people all dressed in traditional outfits, practicing Hindu rituals year-round.

It’s not hard to come across Nepalese people in their traditional attire.

Their gods

☀️ Hinduism is a polytheistic religion with its most powerful trio being:

• Vishnu the Protector
• Brahma the Creator
• Shiva the Destroyer. Their names represent harmony between humanity and nature (kind of like Taoism or Daoism), and there are many other gods symbolizing every element in human life. From birth, people are meant to live in harmony with nature, to carry out their duty to preserve the species, and even in death, they return to it.

That’s why you’ll often see “erotic” paintings in Hindu temples and religious museums — depictions of human sexual acts are considered sacred, not just instinctual (even if sex education here is still kind of taboo). Upon death, a person’s body is washed in river water, then cremated, and their ashes are scattered into the river. That’s how the body returns to Mother Nature. The sacred rivers are murky grey because of these ashes.

An erotic painting at a Hindu museum, because they believe human sexual activity also holds a religious connection, considered “sacred” rather than just satisfying instinct.

Fertility symbols Linga – Yoni, where the Linga also represents Shiva, the protector god in Hinduism.

Linga – Yoni I spotted right by the roadside :)))

When I visited Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu, I was shocked that this whole process is public — tourists can even buy tickets to watch it. But there are exceptions: bodies deemed “impure” must be buried instead of cremated. These include premature babies, infants who die young, mothers who die in childbirth, people who die from snake bites or leprosy, and Hindu monks, who are considered too holy to burn.

The deceased are sprinkled with river water, then cremated, and their ashes are scattered into the river — at Pashupatinath Temple, Kathmandu.

Influences of Hinduism in Vietnam - my home country

You might think Hinduism only exists in India or South Asia, but it has deeply influenced Vietnamese traditional culture too. Buffalo slaughter festivals, buffalo fights, and the worship of mother goddesses, land spirits, sea gods, and fishermen — all of these are adapted and evolved from Hindu practices.

This is especially true in my hometown Bình Thuận – Ninh Thuận, where Hinduism was the religion of the Champa Kingdom, before it was colonized by the Nguyễn lords. That’s why we still have remnants of their temples, ancient Champa ruins, and fertility symbols like mortars and pestles, or Linga–Yoni statues symbolizing human sexual organs. Even Cambodia’s Angkor Wat was originally a temple to worship Vishnu!

The Cham tower relics of Hinduism, from the ancient Champa kingdom in my hometown Bình Thuận.

Hindu practices have deeply shaped Vietnamese spirituality, including fortune telling, and even Buddhism, the largest religion in Vietnam. Hinduism is the root of Buddhism, but it’s important to note that South Asian Buddhism is different from Vietnamese Buddhism.

Temples in Nepal, where Buddhism blends harmoniously with Hinduism.

Yes, Hinduism gives birth to Buddhism, but the 2 are not the same!

First, we need to know that there are three main branches of Buddhism:

• Mahayana (Đại Thừa / Northern / Great Vehicle) — practiced in China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. It teaches that everyone can become a Buddha, and we can help each other achieve enlightenment.

• Theravada (Tiểu Thừa / Southern / Lesser Vehicle) — practiced in Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand. This branch believes each person must follow their own solitary path to reach Nirvana.

• Vajrayana (Kim Cương Thừa / Diamond Vehicle) — practiced in Tibet (now under China), which focuses on powerful techniques to accelerate the path to enlightenment.

Buddha statues in Nepal are quite different from those of the Mahayana (Northern) tradition in Vietnam.

That’s why Buddha statues in Nepal look so different from those in Vietnam — they reflect a blend of Buddhist and Hindu elements. It’s honestly amazing to see two religions coexisting inside one another, without judgment or division, like I saw in Nepal!