Garuda: The King of Birds
To free his mother from slavery, the bird Garuda stole the drink of immortality from the gods and never tasted it. The Mahābhārata tells how he became Vishnu's mount and the enemy of every snake.
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India
Explore the stories, beliefs, and extraordinary beings of this tradition.
13 stories
Kali: The Dark Goddess Born from Anger
When the goddess's face grew dark with anger, Kali sprang from her brow and drank the blood of a demon who multiplied with every drop that fell. Colonial writers made her the goddess of a cult of stranglers; the poets of Bengal call her Mother.
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Savitri and Satyavan: The Wife Who Argued with Death
Savitri chose a husband who had one year to live, and when Yama came for him she followed the god of death and talked until he let him go. The epic tells it to praise a faithful wife, but what wins the day is her argument.
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The Dashavatara: The Ten Avatars of Vishnu
A fish that outgrew every pond, a boar that lifted the earth on its tusk, a dwarf who asked a king for three steps of land: again and again, Vishnu comes down into the world. Ten of these descents are famous, but the texts have never fully agreed on which ten.
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The Descent of the Ganga: The River That Fell from Heaven
King Bhagiratha spent years in austerities to bring the heavenly river Ganga down to earth, and Shiva caught her in his hair so that her fall would not break the world. The old tellings disagree on much else, and the great relief at Mamallapuram may not show her at all.
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Shiva: The Destroyer and the Dancer
When Daksha shut Shiva out of his sacrifice, his daughter Sati gave up her body rather than hear her husband insulted, and Shiva's fury wrecked the rite. Textbooks call him the destroyer; the texts that worship him say he makes, keeps and ends the world, and dances while he does it.
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Hanuman: The Monkey Who Leapt the Sea
As a child he leapt at the sun and broke his jaw; grown up, he crossed the sea in one leap to find Sita and carried a mountain of healing herbs to the battlefield. In India he is worshipped as the model celibate, but the Thai Ramakien gives him loves and sons.
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Krishna: The Cowherd God
Born in a prison, raised among cowherds, he stole butter, danced on a serpent and held up a mountain, then taught a warrior on a battlefield and died by a hunter's arrow. His childhood is barely in the Mahābhārata, and the Bhāgavata, the fullest telling of his youth, never names Radha.
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Kurukshetra: The War of the Mahābhārata
A game of dice costs five brothers their kingdom and their wife's dignity, and eighteen days of war at Kurukshetra win it back. To win, they break the rules of battle, and the poem never lets them forget it.
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Rama and Sita: The Exile, the Abduction and the Many Rāmāyaṇas
A prince is sent into the forest for fourteen years, a demon king carries off his wife, and an army of monkeys helps him win her back. That is Vālmīki's Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa, one telling among hundreds that reach from the Tamil country and Bangkok to a Vietnamese tale of a yaksha king.
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The Churning of the Ocean: Gods, Demons and the Nectar of Immortality
Gods and demons used a mountain as a churning stick and a serpent as the rope, and churned the ocean for amṛta, the drink of immortality. Who held the mountain up, and who drank the poison? It depends on which text you open.
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Ganesha: How the God of Beginnings Got His Elephant Head
Pārvatī made a son to guard her door, and Shiva, who did not know him, cut off his head. That is the best-known answer to why Ganesha has an elephant's head. The Purāṇas give at least three others.
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Durga and Mahishasura: The Goddess and the Buffalo Demon
The buffalo demon Mahiṣa drove the gods out of heaven. Their anger became a mountain of light, and the light became a goddess. Images of her victory are older than the text that tells it, and every autumn Kolkata shapes her again from river clay.
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