Maya (mythology)
Μαία is a goddess in the Greek, Roman, and Hindu pantheons.
Greek Mythology
In Greek mythology, Maya or Maia (in Greek Μαία, meaning "little mother") is the largest of the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Her and her sisters, born on Mount Cylene in Arcadia, are sometimes called mountain goddesses. Maya was the oldest, the most beautiful and shy.
According to the Homeric hymn, Maya fathered Hermes with Zeus in the cave of Mount Cileno. After giving birth to the child, she Maya wrapped him in blankets and went to sleep. The rapidly growing infant Hermes crawled away to Thessaly, where on the evening of the first day of his life he stole some of Apollo's cattle and invented the lyre. Maya refused to believe Apollo when he claimed that Hermes had been the thief, and Zeus agreed with him. Finally, Apollo exchanged the cattle for the lyre.
Maya also raised the infant Arcas to protect him from Hera, who had turned his mother, Callisto, into a bear.
Roman mythology
In Roman mythology, Maia or Maya was the goddess of spring, and as such the month of May was named in her honor. See in this regard Maia Maiestas. In ancient Roman religion and myth, Maia embodied the concept of growth, as her name was thought to be related to the comparative adjective maius, maior & # 34; bigger, bigger & # 34;. Originally, she may have been an independent namesake of the Greek Maia, whose myths she absorbed through the Hellenization of Latin literature and culture.
Hindu mythology
In Hindu mythology, Maya is for some the mother goddess or creative principle, on the one hand, and for others a goddess of appearance and illusion that is rather an abstract concept or abstraction of a metaphysical nature.