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. IMahabharata
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
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. IIMahabharata
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
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. IIIMahabharata
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
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. IVMahabharata
Shakuntala and Dushyanta: The Ring and the King Who Forgot Her
A king married a hermit's daughter in the forest, gave her a ring, and rode away promising to send for her. When she came to his court, pregnant and alone, he said he did not know her. Two old texts explain that forgetting in two different ways, and this page keeps both, because the difference changes who is at fault.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. VMahabharata
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
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. VIMahabharata
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
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. VIIMahabharata
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
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. VIIIMahabharata
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
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. IXMahabharata
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 Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. XMahabharata
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
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. XIMahabharata
Chyavana and Sukanya: The Eyes in the Anthill
A sage sat in penance so long that an anthill closed over him and only his eyes showed through the earth. A king's daughter saw two points of light in the mound and pushed a thorn into them, not knowing they could bleed. What followed was a marriage given as reparation, a bargain with the twin physicians of the gods, and a wife who kept her word twice when nobody could have made her. The jar of Chyawanprash in every Indian pharmacy still carries the old man's name.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. XIIMahabharata
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. XIIIMahabharata
Uttanka: The Earrings He Was Sent to Fetch
A guru's wife wanted an unusual parting gift, not grain or gold but the earrings worn by a queen, fetched and returned within four days. Uttanka got them, and lost them on the road to a serpent king who wanted them more than any queen had a right to expect. What followed was a hole in the ground that opened into a country running on its own loom and its own turning wheel, a horse that breathed fire on Indra's order, and a grudge against the serpent Takshaka that Uttanka carried for the rest of his life, straight into the reign of a king named Janamejaya.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. XIVMahabharata
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
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. XVMahabharata
Barbarika, the Head That Watched the Whole War
A boy with three arrows and a vow to the weaker side. Why Krishna asked for his head, and how he became Shyam Baba.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/All ages
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. XVIMahabharata
The Boy Who Taught Himself: Ekalavya and the Price of a Thumb
A forest boy became the finest archer in the land with no teacher but a clay statue. Then the teacher he never had came to collect.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/6 min/All ages
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. XVIIMahabharata
Savitri and Satyavan: The Woman Who Argued With Death
Warned that her chosen husband had only a year to live, Savitri married him anyway. When Death came to collect his soul, she followed on foot and would not turn back.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. XVIIIMahabharata
The night a half-brother kept a blind king awake until dawn, trying to stop a war
Krishna's peace mission had failed. The war was three weeks away. Dhritarashtra could not sleep. He summoned his half-brother Vidura, son of a maidservant, denied the throne by his birth, and asked him to speak. What followed was a single long argument against the war, delivered between dusk and dawn, by a man who knew it was already too late.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/All ages
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. XIXMahabharata
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 lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. XXMahabharata
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
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. 21Mahabharata
The king who traded his old age for his son's youth, and what he learned after a thousand years of pleasure
King Yayati was cursed with premature old age. He asked his five sons in turn to give him their youth - only one agreed. After a thousand years living in his son's young body, Yayati realized something his wives, palaces, and conquests had never taught him.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/All ages
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. 22Mahabharata
The dice that made a king lose his kingdom, and his form
Nala won Damayanti through a swayamvara where four gods competed for her. Then his brother proposed a game of dice. By morning, Nala had lost his kingdom, his clothes, and the very recognizable shape of his face.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/9 min/All ages
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. 23Mahabharata
The boy who walked into a king's yajna and stopped a holocaust
King Janamejaya vowed to sacrifice every snake on earth to avenge his father's death. The brahmin boy Astika walked alone into the yajna-shala - and a single sentence stopped the fire.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/6 min/All ages
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763