Sumati says- O father! After the demise of Kartaveerya, his ministers and priests decided to crown his son Arjuna as their new king. But Arjuna refused saying that he would not become the king unless and until he had attained the status of a Yogi. Sage Garg then advised Arjuna…
One day, all the cowherds took their cattles to a large pond to let them drink water. There they say a huge creature sitting like a hillock on the bank. They were frightened by its appearance. The creature was in fact a demon named Bakasur who had arrived there in…
In the beginning of the Kali Yuga, sages like Shaunak et al organized a vast Jnana Yagya in the holy region of the Naimisharanya. The purpose of the yagya was the benefit of the common people and it was to last for a millennium. To quench the spiritual curiosity of…
Samsara has the essential meaning of the cycle of rebirths or simply rebirth. Samsara is one of the key concepts in understanding the reason Hindu mythology can be so complex—figures changing genders from one lifetime to the next, rebirths in lifetimes with different names but carrying from a previous lifetime…
The four life stages (asrama-dharma) are viewed by many scholars as joining the Vedic model of three life stages of the Aryas (“the noble ones,” who were twice- born) with a fourth stage, that of renunciation, which developed outside of the Aryan or Brahmanical tradition. The renunciation movement spanned such…
Samjna was the daughter of Vishwakarma, the divine architect. When she became the wife of Surya, she could not stand his heat, so she practiced austerities (tapas) in order to create a substitute. Finally, after having three children—Manu (the first man), Yama (god of death), and Yami (goddess of the…
