PSM Geography: The Story of India

A statue of the god Shiva, ca. 1300 CE.

Today, in order to further explore the impact of religion on India's culture, we will take a look at the PBS website The Story of India. The site is a wonderful resource full of photos, video and text.

Open an MS Word document. You will use this document to complete today's assignment. It is due at the beginning of tomorrow's class period (stapled, if necessary).

Part 1: An Introduction (10 points)
Watch the introduction video on the website's home page. Use it to answer these questions (you'll have about 7 minutes to do this part -- we'll talk about it together):

What information will this website allow you to access/discover about India? (5 points)
What do you hope to learn about India through this website? (5 points)

Part 2: Gods and Godesses (30 points)
First of all, do Hindus believe in one god or many?

You will be assigned two of the gods to research today. Complete this assignment in an MS Word document for each god. Type the god's name in bold font above each set of questions.

Describe what the god/goddess looks like. What might this tell you about his/her worshippers' beliefs? (5 points)
Summarize the god's duties. (5 points)
Imagine that you were preparing for a prayer service to your assigned god. What would you do to prepare yourself? What would you be praying to this god for? (5 points)

If you have time, examine the links for the other gods.

Which god fascinates you the most? Explain.

The list of Hindu gods is below:

Shiva

Krishna and Radha

Hanuman

Saraswati

Lakshmi

Ganesha

I will give you about 10 minutes to look at the various resources related to the gods. We will talk about each god as a class. As you listen to your classmates, complete the following:

For each god, record his/her name and one fact about him/her.

Part 3: Culture (30 points)
First, you will choose 2 of the following topics. You will need to browse through the topics to make your choice. For each of the cultural topics you choose, complete the following. Type the name of your topic in bold font above each set of questions:

Summarize the information you can learn about the topic from the website. (5 points)
Describe the topic's influence on India's culture. (5 points)
Imagine you are a visitor to India. How does this aspect of Indian culture compare to American culture? (5 points)

Part 4: Synthesis
Write a paragraph describing your visit to India. Use the information you researched to craft your response.

You will need at minimum a topic sentence, 3 body sentences, and a conclusion (5 sentences minimum).