Library
Stories
Stories from the itihasa and Puranas, retold simply so families can read them together.
Gajendra Moksha
The elephant king who let go
An elephant king, seized by a crocodile and worn down past the end of his own strength, lifts a lotus and calls out to the Supreme. The story is Hinduism's clearest picture of surrender, and of the Lord who comes running.
Read the storyBhagavata PuranaDhruva
The boy who became the fixed star
A small prince is told he has no place on his father's lap. He walks into the forest to find a place no one can take from him, and the search turns a hurt child into the steadiest point in the night sky.
Read the storyBhagavata PuranaPrahlad and Narasimha
Devotion that nothing could burn
A demon king wins a boon he thinks makes him immortal and demands to be worshipped as God. His own small son keeps singing the name of Lord Vishnu instead. The clash between them gives us Holi, and the fierce form of Lord Narasimha.
Read the storyPuranasMarkandeya
The boy who held on at the door of death
Promised only sixteen years of life, a young devotee of Lord Shiva meets death by clinging to the Shivling and refusing to let go. What he holds on to turns out to be stronger than the noose that comes for him.
Read the storyShiva PuranaThe Birth of Ganesha
The guardian at his mother's door
Goddess Parvati shapes a boy from turmeric paste and sets him to guard her door. What follows is a terrible misunderstanding, an elephant's head, and the making of the most beloved doorkeeper in the universe — the one every puja now greets first.
Read the storyPuranasSamudra Manthan
The churning of the ocean
Stripped of their strength by a sage's curse, the devas must churn the cosmic ocean for the nectar of immortality — and they cannot do it without their enemies. What rises first is poison. What rises last changes the world.
Read the storyRamayanaShabari
The berries that were already tasted
An old woman of the forest waits a lifetime for one guest. When Lord Ram finally comes to her hut, she offers him berries she has bitten into first — to be sure each one is sweet. He eats them as the finest meal of his exile.
Read the storyBhagavata PuranaSudama and Krishna
A handful of beaten rice
A poor brahmin walks to Dwarka to see his childhood friend, who happens to be Lord Krishna, carrying the only gift his household can afford: a little beaten rice. He is too ashamed to offer it, and he never manages to ask for anything at all.
Read the storyMahabharataSavitri and Satyavan
The wife who followed death
Told that the man she has chosen will die in one year, a princess marries him anyway — and when death keeps the appointment, she follows Yama himself down the road, out-thinking him boon by boon until he must hand her husband back.
Read the storyMahabharataEklavya
The student no one would teach
Refused by the great teacher Drona because of his birth, a forest boy makes a clay image of the guru and teaches himself archery before it — until he surpasses the teacher's own princes, and is asked for a price that still makes every listener flinch.
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