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| Pashu by Devdutt Pattanaik Image from Indian Epics Reading Guides post for MLLL 4993 |
Surabhi's Children With Hooves
- Gandharvas are celestial musicians who live inside flowers... interesting. First time I'm reading about their residence.
- Raising of the Earth: once a demon dragged the earth under the sea, so the earth goddess cried out to Brahma for help. He breathed out of his nostrils a board who dove into the sea, speared the demon with his tusks, and lifted the earth out of the sea on his snout. The earth goddess clutched so tightly to the boar that we have folds in the earth, or mountains and valleys. The boar was Vishnu, and he buried his tusks into the earth, which is why mother earth produces plants and trees.
- Ekavira Heheya: Again, we see that a woman (goddess) is cursed to live as an animal until she gives birth to a human child. It's interesting, they never state that a male child should be born, but it always seem implicit, and a male child is pretty much always born. Anyways, Lakshmi failed to listen to her husband, Vishnu, droning on and on as she was distracted by a beautiful horse. He cursed her to live as a horse, and so she left for the Earth immediately to do so. He missed her immediately (serves him right), so he too went down to the Earth in the form of a horse, impregnanted her, and she gave birth to a son, human, though he was named "son of Horses" and he grew up to be a hero.
- Kadru and Vinata and Ucchaishrava's white or black tail: Kadru tricked her sister into becoming her slave by quarreling over whether the white flying horse was all white, or actually had some black in it's tail. She forced her snake children to get into the horse's tail, so when they checked the next day it would look like a black tail, and her sister would become her slave. Her children balked at the idea of cheating, but she kicked them, and forced them to obey her by threatening to allow them to be roasted to death in a fire if they did not obey. Ouch! What a cruel witch of a mother.
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| Kamadhenu from Vikipedia I'm laughing because I can't quite make out who it is, but there is definitely a god of the dung in this image. |
- Kamadhenu: celestial cow of the gods who not only produces milk, but can give you anything you desire. However, she is drawn to people who desire nothing, and so she likes to hang out with Rishi Vasistha. She had a daughter, Surabhi, who had a daughter Nandini. I met a lot of people in India named Nandini, and I always thought it was a pretty name. I also took a moment to pause and dwell on Kamadhenu.... while she can grant anyone anything that they like, she runs away from people who are greedy and desire too much. She much prefers to hang out with people who desire nothing... this is sort of like friendship, no? People who ask too much of us and just keep asking and asking and asking we tend to cut out of our lives, but people who don't need much and who are just there to support us are the people that we prefer to be around.
Sarama's Children, With Paws
Some of the concepts in this book are just really, really out there. For example, Riskha, a male monkey who falls into a pond and emerges looking like a beautiful woman. Indra and Surya both fall in love with her/him, and she produces two children... sooo, she's completely changed genders. After a while though, she falls in the pond again, and re-emerges as her/his monkey form. No one recognizes him, and so he goes back to live in the forest. His human children eventually get raised by a sage, who curse them to live as monkeys, and they change into monkeys and go to the forest, where Riksha cares for them and looks after them... his own children.... Like, what? That's a lot of gender changes happening.
Indra's Lore:
- Indra, the god of the sky and king of the devas rides the elephant Airavata who was six tusks, seven trunks and white skin
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| Image from Wikimedia Commons |
Cat Lore
- "Many people in Bengal say that Shashthi is the goddess who helps mothers bear children and take care of them. She loves cats and their kittens. They also say that black cats follow Kali, the wild goddess of the forest, when she goes for a walk on new moon nights."
- I wonder how long black cats and their lore have been associated with the moon, specifically new moons? I'd love to write a story about Kali out for a midnight stroll through the forest with black cats darting around behind her.
