Subrahmanya means literally “favorable to priests,” often used as an invocation to the devas (gods) in Vedic soma sacrifices. Subrahmanya was also the designation for one of three assistants to the Vedic Udgatri priest. However, this beautiful Sanskrit compound was simply appropriated in the Puranas to name Siva’s most frightening…
This entry will focus on Soma as the plant and Vedic drink. For more information about Soma as a deva and as the moon, see the entry on Candra. In the Vedic period Candra, the moon, and Soma, the entheogenic (religious experience-inducing) plant, were connected by associations (bandhus) in the…
Skanda was the six-headed son of Siva, god of war. Skanda can be seen as either sharing his function with Karttikeya, Guha, Kumara, and Subrahmanya or as absorbing them as epithets. Siva’s son had been the son of Agni, god of fire, in earlier mythology. In the Mahabharata there…
If the mention of the word Siva (auspicious) in the Vedas is considered to refer to Lord Siva, Siva spans all periods of Hindu mythology. No matter when he enters Hindu mythology, Siva is among the two or three most important gods— either as one of the later Hindu Triad,…
Sukhdev says: Parikshit, the cowherds told the tale of Aghasura salvation to their parents only after a year of the incidence. During that period of one year, Lord Krishna multiplied himself and took the guise of his fellow cowherd and their stock of cattles to remove the Illusion of Brahma,who…
One day, Krishna planned a picnic near Nandanvan. So rising early in the morning, He awakened his fellow cowherds sounding a horn. Together, all the cowherds, and their cattles went to the forest. There, on the bank of Yamuna river they began to play joyfully. Nandanavana was in fact an…
