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. IPuranic tales
Yama and Yamuna: The Meal That Became Bhai Dooj
Death rarely visits his own family. The one time Yama did, his twin sister fed him with her own hands, and what he gave her in return is why brothers still get a tilak on their forehead once a year.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. IIPuranic tales
The physician who rose last from the churned ocean, and gave his name to a day of gold
Poison came up first, and Shiva drank it. Everything else the ocean owed the gods came after, and the last thing to surface was a god carrying a pot of medicine. His feast day is now spent buying metal.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/All ages
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. IVPuranic tales
Ashtavakra, bent in eight places, who won an argument at Janaka's court
A boy cursed before he was born walks into a hall of learned men who laugh at how he walks. He tells them exactly why that is shameful, then wins the debate that his father lost, and gets his father back from under a river.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. VPuranic tales
Agastya, the sage who drank the ocean
A mountain that would not stop growing, an ocean that would not give up its hiding demons. Agastya has an answer for both, and neither answer comes free.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
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. VIIPuranic tales
Rantideva, and the last cup of water he did not drink
A king gives away his kingdom, then his food, then forty-eight days of nothing at all, until the only water left in the house goes to a stranger no one else would touch.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. VIIIPuranic 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
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. IXPuranic tales
Pururavas and Urvashi: The Condition She Set
An apsara agreed to live with a mortal king on two conditions: two rams kept by her bed were never to be touched, and he was never to let her see him unclothed. One night of theft and one flash of lightning broke both promises before he understood what he had done. What the Rig Veda says happened next is far harder than the romance most retellings keep.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/All ages
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. XPuranic 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
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. XIPuranic 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
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. XIIPuranic tales
Maitreyi, who was offered half a fortune and asked for a lesson instead
Yajnavalkya is leaving for the forest and calls his two wives to divide his wealth between them. Katyayani takes her share without a second thought. Maitreyi asks a different question: would all the riches in the world make her immortal. When he says no, she asks him to teach her what he knows instead.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. XIIIPuranic tales
Kacha, Devayani, and the mantra that raised the dead
The devas keep losing a war they cannot win, because only one man alive knows how to bring the dead back. His daughter falls in love with the student sent to steal that secret from him, and neither of them gets to keep what they wanted.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. XIVPuranic tales
Satyakama Jabala, who told the truth about his mother
A boy who cannot name his father goes to study under a sage who will ask him to. What he brings back from his mother is not a lineage. It is the plain truth, and it turns out to be enough.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. XVPuranic tales
Dadhichi: The Sage Who Was Asked for His Bones
No weapon in heaven could kill Vritra, and the one that could had not been made yet. It needed the bones of a sage, and bones cannot be stolen out of a living man. So Indra, king of the gods, had to walk to a hermitage on a riverbank and ask. This is the story of the asking, and of the old man who heard the request out and said yes.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. XVIPuranic tales
Harishchandra: The King Who Would Not Break His Word
A sage asked Ayodhya's king for his kingdom, and then for a sacrificial fee that could not be paid out of it. What it cost him was his wife, his son, his own freedom, and a year collecting the burning fee at the cremation ground of Kashi, where one night a woman he did not recognise came down the path carrying a dead child.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/10 min/All ages
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. XVIIPuranic tales
The craftsman who put the Sun on a wheel and shaved an eighth off him
Sanjna could not live beside her husband, because her husband was the Sun. She stood her own shadow in her place and walked out. Years later he found out, and went to his father-in-law in a rage, and his father-in-law happened to be the man who makes things.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/All ages
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. XVIIIPuranic tales
The king who gave away three steps of land, and offered his own head for the third
Bali had beaten the gods in a fair fight and was running the three worlds rather well when a very short brahmin boy walked into his sacrifice and asked for three paces of ground. His own teacher told him it was a trap and handed him a lawful way to refuse. He gave anyway.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. XIXPuranic tales
The Cry of the Elephant King
An elephant king, trapped by a crocodile for a thousand years, lets go of his own strength and calls out to God.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/6 min/All ages
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. XXPuranic tales
Nachiketa at the Door of Death: The Boy Who Asked Yama
A boy is given away to Death in a fit of his father's anger, waits three nights at Yama's threshold, and refuses every treasure until he is told the one thing worth knowing.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775
Pl. 21Puranic tales
The girl who composed thirty verses to win Vishnu's heart and walked into his idol on her wedding day
A foundling raised in a Tamil flower garden refused every human suitor and composed the Thiruppavai - thirty Margazhi verses - for the only husband she would have. On her wedding day at Srirangam, she climbed onto the deity's couch and was never seen again. The verses are still sung at dawn through the cold month, in every Vaishnava house in the south.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
The Battle at Lanka, Sahibdin, Mewar, 1649 to 1653
Pl. 22Puranic tales
The sage who kicked Vishnu in the chest to test him, and the goddess who walked out of heaven because of what came next
Sage Bhrigu drew back his foot and struck the Lord of the Universe in the chest. The cosmos went still. What Vishnu did is the famous half of the story. What Lakshmi did, less told, is the deeper one.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
The marriage of Rama and Sita, Shangri Ramayana, c.1700
Pl. 23Puranic tales
The boy who would not stop saying Narayana, and the pillar his father struck in fury that opened, releasing a man-lion
In the throne room, in front of the full court, the demon king pointed at a great stone pillar and asked his small son: "Is your god in this too?" The boy looked at the pillar, then back at his father, and answered yes.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/9 min/All ages
Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Razmnama, 1761 to 1763
Pl. 24Puranic tales
The five-year-old prince who climbed onto his father's lap, was pushed off, and walked into the forest to find a higher throne
When his stepmother told him he had no right to sit on the king's lap, the small boy did not cry for long. He walked into the forest, learned a single mantra, and stood on one foot until the sky itself bent to look at him.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/8 min/All ages
Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot, India, 18th to 19th c.
Pl. 25Puranic tales
When Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva came to test Anasuya - and ended up as her babies
Anasuya was famous for absolute hospitality. The three goddesses, jealous, sent their husbands - Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva - to her cottage as begging brahmins, with one impossible demand: they would only eat if she served them naked. What she did made all three gods, briefly, into infants.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/All ages
Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan, India, 17th c.
Pl. 26Puranic tales
The boy who hugged a Shiva-linga and defeated Yama himself
When Yama came at the appointed hour to take 16-year-old Markandeya's life, the boy threw his arms around the Shiva-linga and would not let go. What happened next changed the rules of death.
Vidhata Editorial Desk/7 min/All ages
Sudāmā at the glimpse of Krishna’s palace, Pahari, c.1775