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…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In Hinduism, God cannot be divine without the Goddess. There is no Vishnu without Lakshmi. No Shiva without Shakti. No Brahma without Saraswati. But it is a mystery for many why Hindus, for whom divinity is both male and female, treat women so badly. Aren’t women…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In South India, Kartikeya is worshipped as Murugan, who stands on top of mountains. On either side of him stand his two wives, Valli and Sena. Valli is a tribal girl, while Sena is a celestial princess, the daughter of Indra. There are songs of Murugan’s…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist A dramatic shift happened in Buddhism roughly 500 years after the historical Buddha. This dramatic shift is the rise of what is called Mahayana Buddhism or the Great Vehicle of Buddhism. This thought perhaps emerged in Kashmir and Afghanistan and spread to China, where it was…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Back in the year 2011, I went to an exhibition of Sudarshan Sahoo, master stone carver from Odisha, at Jehangir Art Gallery, and saw an image of Krishna, standing with flute in hand. What caught my eye was the nose-ring worn by Krishna on the right…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In the Puranas, we have heard the story of the Narasimha avatar. Hiranyakashipu had obtained a boon from Brahma that he should not be killed by either man or animal, at day or at night, above or below, inside or outside, by neither weapon nor tool….

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In Hindu mythology, whenever an asura asks for immortality, Brahma tells them that they can have whatever they wish except that. The clever asura then asks for a boon that will render him immortal for all practical purposes. But, embedded in the boon is a loophole,…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The story of Gajendra Moksha from the Bhagavata Purana speaks of an elephant king, Gajendra, who is in a state of erotica arousal, and is having fun with his herd of cow elephants in a lotus lake in a heady erotic atmosphere. But the pleasure is…

By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist When we study how people imagine the world, and how they express it in art, we understand their world-view. Buddhist stupas crowned with special umbrellas indicate Sumeru, the central world axis and the heavens above it, above which sits the Buddha in a formless state after…