By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In Hindu mythological stories narrated in the Puranas, Brahma’s son Kashyapa has two wives. One called Aditi, the other called Diti. Aditi’s children are called Adityas or Devas, and they reside in the celestial realms above the sky. Diti’s sons are called Daityas, and they reside…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The fundamental difference between Hinduism and Buddhism rests on the idea of the soul or atma. Hindus say that there is a soul. They clarify that there is a soul within every individual living (jiva-atma) being and there is a cosmic soul that encompasses the universe…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik The Vedas, which are over 3,000 years old, refer to a deity called Rudra who is fierce and feared. Is he the Shiva we know today, the hermit who married Parvati, daughter of the Himalayas? We can only speculate in hindsight. The word Shiva is used for the first time only…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The image of the buffalo-slaying lion-riding Durga starts appearing in Hindu mythology only in the post-Gupta period, around 1,500 years ago. Amongst the earliest images we know today are one from Ajanta and Ellora caves in Maharashtra, and from Mammalapuram dated before 7th century. Earlier icons…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist If one travels around Pune, one occasionally comes across small folk shrines dedicated to a deity known as Mhasoba, or the Buffalo-God. Not much is known about him, but the shrine is clearly not a Brahminical one and there is nothing about him found in Sanskrit…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist For such a vast coastline, Indians do not have much of a sea mythology. Most images of boats in Indian art are related to ponds and rivers, and not the sea, such as images of Ram and Sita crossing the Ganga, or Krishna and Radha on…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Everything in nature has an expiry date. Even the sun. Talk to an astrophysicist and they will tell you when the sun will eventually die. Nothing lasts forever. We know that. Yet, culture is all about ‘built to last’. The obsession with defying mortality, defying nature,…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist It is common amongst Western scholars and their Westernised students to differentiate between the Vedic yagna and the Puranic puja, rituals that define the two major phases of Hinduism, one that flourished over 3,000 years ago and one that emerged 2,000 years ago. Of course, at…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The Gita is a part of the Mahabharata. It is the dialogue of 700 verses between Krishna and Arjuna just before the Kurukshetra War, where the Pandavas fight the Kauravas. This dialogue is found in the Bhisma Parva, one of the 18 books of the epic….

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik Some feminists expect me to ‘explain’ Hinduism’s misogyny. Typically, a verse from Manusmriti will be thrown at me. For example, verse 2.213: It is the nature of women to seduce men in this world; for that reason the wise are never unguarded in the company of females. Or verse 5.151: Girls are…