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.
- Catalogue38 stories in printCurated by the Vidhata Editorial Desk5 to 10 minutes each
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Pl. IRegional 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
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. IIRegional folklore
The 12th-century mystic who walked out of her marriage and clothed herself only in her own hair
Mahadevi was a 12th-century Kannada poet who married a king under one condition and broke the condition the moment he tried to enforce it. She walked out of his palace, removed her clothes, let her hair fall to her ankles, and walked into the forest singing vachanas to her real husband, Lord Chenna Mallikarjuna.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/6 min/Adults
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. IIIRegional folklore
The hunter who plucked out his own eyes when the Shivalinga began to bleed
Thinnan was an illiterate forest hunter from the hills of Kalahasti. He worshipped Shiva by spitting water from his mouth onto the linga and offering wild boar meat as prasad. When the linga's eye began to bleed, he tore out his own eye to replace it, and reached for the second when the other eye began to bleed too.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/6 min/Adults
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. IVDevi 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. VDevi 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. VIMahabharata
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. VIIMahabharata
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. VIIIRamayana
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