By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist When one speaks of Krishna, one usually speaks of North Indian traditions of Surdas and Mirabai, or South Indian traditions of Andal and the Alwars. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu dominates eastern traditions of Krishna, just as Vallabhacharya and Dyaneshwara dominate the Western traditions. But we rarely pay attention…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In the Ramayana, when Dashrath asks his son, Ram, to go into exile and Ram obeys, one wonders what is Ram’s motivation. Is he obeying his father? Or is he taking an action that ensures that the integrity of the royal family is never questioned? In…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In the Mahabharata, we come across two very interesting stories: in one, the husband saves his wife’s life; in the other, the wife saves her husband’s life. The first story is of Ruru and Priyamvada. Ruru’s beautiful wife, Priyamvada, died at an early age. Distraught, Ruru…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The story of Nachiketa comes from the Upanishads, so from 2,500 years ago, essentially, belonging to a period in history when the theories of karma, rebirth and liberation, were being slowly consolidated in the Indian subcontinent. Nachiketa was a young boy who observed his father donating…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik In the Vishnu Purana, we are introduced to the story of Prahalad. We are told he is the son of an Asura king, Hiranyakashipu. Because Hiranyakashipu receives a boon from Brahma, he cannot be killed by any human or animal, either inside or outside a dwelling, at day or at night….

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The story of Dhruva comes from the Puranic traditions, especially the Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavata Purana. It is, at once, a metaphysical story, as well as a story of devotion, recounted most simplistically. Once upon a time, there was a boy called Dhruva, who wanted…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist A thousand years after the Buddha’s nirvana, Buddhists finally acquired a Goddess of (almost) equal stature to the Buddha. Before this, the only Goddess who was very prominent in Buddhist literature was Shri or the Goddess of Fortune, clearly included within the Buddhist iconography by the…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In popular re-tellings, the Mahabharata ends tragically with vast bloodshed on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, where the Kauravas are defeated by the Pandavas. Following this episode, there is the Ashwamedha Parva. It describes how Yudhishthira becomes king and lets loose his royal horse across the land,…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The Buddhists and the Hindus share the idea of the land becoming sacred, when it is connected with the body of a holy being. Let us first hear the Buddhist story. We are told that when Buddha died, his body was cremated, and after the cremation,…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In the Vedas, long before people knew about Gods such as Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, there was a story of how the God of Heaven committed incest with the Goddess of Dawn, his daughter. Now this is called the problem of primal incest, which is found…