From the epics
Stories from the Indian astrological tradition.
Hand-curated stories from the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavata Purana, Padma Purana, Skanda Purana, Buddhist Jataka tales, the Tamil Sangam corpus, and oral folk traditions of Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. Each story sourced to a specific text. Five to ten minutes per story. Every translation is hand-authored.
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Pl. IDevi stories
Vrinda, Jalandhar, and Why Tulsi Is Married to Vishnu Every Kartik
A wife's faithfulness made her husband unkillable, so Vishnu put on her husband's own face to break it. She found out, and cursed the god who did it, without softening a word. The tradition's answer was not to deny the wrong but to marry her to him every year since.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. IIDevi stories
Kali and Raktabija: the demon who multiplied with every wound
Raktabija had a boon that turned every wound against the one who gave it: each drop of his blood that touched the ground became another Raktabija, exactly as strong as the first. The gods struck him and made the problem worse. Kali's answer was to make sure no drop ever landed.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. IIIPuranic tales
Narakasura, and the Dawn He Asked Us to Remember as Light
A demon king carries a boon that only his mother can kill him, and never suspects that his mother has already been born a second time, riding beside Krishna to end him. The texts do not agree on whose hand finished it. They agree on what he is said to have asked for on his way out.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/9 min/Adults
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. IVRamayana
Ahalya, and the long wait that ended when Rama came
A sage's curse leaves Ahalya unseen for an age, until a boy walking to Mithila sets his foot in the dust of an empty hermitage.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. VMahabharata
Jarasandha, the King Born in Two Halves
A childless king split one blessed mango between his two queens, and each bore half a child. The halves were thrown out as nothing until a rakshasi in the wasteland pressed them together and a boy started to cry. He grew into the strongest king in Magadha, killable only by the method that made him, and it took Krishna's silence and a blade of grass to show Bhima what that meant.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. VIPuranic tales
Sunahsepha, the boy who was sold to be sacrificed
A childless king vows his future son to a god, then spends years finding reasons not to pay. When the son runs, a starving priest sells his middle boy to die in his place, and the father who sold him charges extra to tie the ropes himself.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. VIIMahabharata
Bhishma on the Bed of Arrows: Fifty-Eight Days Waiting for the Sun to Turn
He had asked the gods for the right to choose his own death. On the tenth day of the war it fell to him to keep that choice, lying on a bed of arrows for fifty-eight days, waiting for the sun to turn north before he could use it.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. VIIIMahabharata
Amba, Who Was Refused by Everyone, and Came Back as Shikhandi
A princess was carried off for a wedding she never wanted, then sent home, then refused by every man she turned to, each one perfectly right by his own code. She spent the rest of her life making sure the last of them would fall.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. IXPuranic tales
Parashurama, the axe, and the order he could not refuse
A sage orders his sons to kill their mother. Only the youngest obeys, and then spends his one wish undoing what his own hand just did.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. XMahabharata
Ganga and Shantanu: The Seven Sons She Drowned, and the Eighth Who Became Bhishma
A king married a river on one condition: never ask why. He kept his silence through seven drowned sons before he finally spoke, and lost her, and kept the eighth.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. XIMahabharata
Renuka: The Mother Who Became Yellamma
Every morning Renuka carried water home from the river in a pot of unbaked clay, held together by nothing but the force of her own chastity. One morning her eyes lingered a moment too long on a gandharva at play in the water, and the pot came apart in her hands. What her husband ordered next, and which of her five sons was willing to do it, is the story that still draws enormous crowds up a hill in Karnataka every year.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/9 min/Adults
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. XIIPuranic tales
Vishwamitra and Menaka, and the Daughter Left in the Forest
A king who wanted to out-will the gods was sent a woman to stop him. Years passed, a child was born, and both of her parents left her by the river for reasons that made sense to them.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. XIIIPuranic tales
Ruru gives away half his life for Pramadvara
Days before the wedding, her foot came down on a snake hidden in the grass, and she was gone. Ruru got her back by giving up half of his own remaining years without being asked twice. What he did with the years he kept is the part of the story worth telling.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. XIVMahabharata
Chitrangada of Manipur: The Daughter Raised as an Heir
Manipur's royal line produces one child a generation, and that year it was a girl. Her father raised her to rule and fight, not to be won, and when Arjuna wanted to marry her, it was the king who set the terms.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/Adults
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. XVMahabharata
The Hunter Who Fought Arjuna to a Standstill, and the Garland That Gave Him Away
Alone on a Himalayan peak, doing penance for a weapon he would need to win a war, Arjuna loosed an arrow at a charging boar in the same instant a mountain hunter did. Both claimed the kill, and the fight that followed cost Arjuna every weapon he carried, down to his own bare hands, before a garland told him who he had actually been fighting.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/Adults
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. XVIMahabharata
Karna and the Armour He Gave Away
Karna was born with armour fused to his skin and could not be killed while he wore it. Indra came asking for it in disguise, and Karna, who already knew who stood before him, cut it off his own body and handed it over anyway.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. XVIIMahabharata
Shishupala, and the Hundred Insults Krishna Counted
A prince was born with three eyes and four arms, and a voice from nowhere said the deformity would leave him in the lap of the man who would one day kill him. His mother begged Krishna for a promise instead of a fear: a hundred offences forgiven, no matter what. Shishupala grew up knowing the number and spending it on purpose, insult by insult, until a king's sacrifice ran the count out.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. XVIIIMahabharata
Ghatotkacha: The Night His Death Saved Arjuna
On the fourteenth night of the war the fighting refused to stop at sunset, and in the dark Ghatotkacha, the rakshasa son of Bhima, began to eat the Kaurava army alive. To save it Karna hurled the one weapon that could not miss, the spear he had kept for years for Arjuna alone. Krishna watched Bhima's son fall and shouted for joy, and this story will not soften that joy, because the whole of the war's terrible arithmetic is in it.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/9 min/Adults
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. XIXMahabharata
Abhimanyu: The Boy Who Knew the Way In
On the thirteenth day at Kurukshetra the Kauravas formed the chakravyuha, the wheel that cannot be fought, only entered. With Arjuna drawn away, one fighter on the Pandava side knew the way in, and he was sixteen, and he had said openly that he did not know the way out. This is the story of what the grown men promised Abhimanyu, and of what they did.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. XXRegional folklore
The woman who tore off her breast and burned a kingdom for justice
When the Pandyan king of Madurai executed her husband on a false charge of theft, Kannagi walked into court holding the proof - an anklet - and after the king had died of shame, she set fire to the city with her own body. The Silappathikaram is the only ancient epic in the world whose central act is a woman's public anger.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/9 min/Adults
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. 21Regional folklore
Akka Mahadevi: the 12th-century Kannada saint who left King Kaushika and clothed herself only in her own hair
Akka Mahadevi was a 12th-century Kannada saint and poet from Udutadi in Karnataka, one of the great voices of the Lingayat and Veerashaiva bhakti movement. In the traditional accounts she was married to King Kaushika, but she walked out of his palace to devote herself wholly to Shiva as Chenna Mallikarjuna, the lord white as jasmine, whom she called her only true husband. She let her hair fall to her ankles, wore nothing else, and walked into the forest singing the Kannada vachanas that still carry her name.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/6 min/Adults
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. 22Devi stories
The merchant's wife who asked Shiva to make her a ghoul
Punithavathi was the most beautiful woman in Karaikal, wife of a wealthy merchant, perfumed, garlanded, the envy of the town. After the mango miracle, when her husband fled in fear of her, she asked Shiva for one boon: take away this body. Let me follow you as a skeleton.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. 23Devi stories
A map of the goddess: walking the fifty-one places her body fell
In Balochistan, Muslim guardians keep watch over a Hindu cave shrine. In Assam, a temple bleeds for three days each year. In Kolkata, the goddess sits in a temple beside a drain. The 51 Shakti-Pithas are the strangest pilgrimage map in the world.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. 24Mahabharata
The son who agreed to be sacrificed before dawn, and asked for one wedding night first
Before the great battle, the Pandava priests said victory required the sacrifice of a perfect prince. Iravan, Arjuna's forgotten son by a Naga princess, volunteered. He had only one condition: he could not die unmarried. Krishna himself solved the problem in a way the temple at Koovagam still remembers.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/Adults
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. 25Mahabharata
The princess whose father rented her womb to four kings to settle a debt
When the sage Galava needed eight hundred horses with one black ear each as guru-dakshina, his friend Yayati had no horses to give. He gave his daughter instead. Her name was Madhavi, and the epic remembers her quietly, the way it remembers all the wounds it could not openly mourn.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/Adults
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. 26Ramayana
What Mandodari said to Ravana on the night before his death
On the last night of the war, Ravana came to his queen Mandodari's chamber. She had not spoken to him in three weeks. That night, she did. The argument she made, quietly, without raising her voice once, was the closest thing to a final mercy the great king ever received.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/Adults
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775