Brahma, having made the world at Vishnu's word, finds it silent: rivers without sound, birds without song, people without speech. Vishnu tells him to call for the one who can make it answer. Brahma sprinkles water from his kamandalu, and a four-armed goddess in white appears on a white lotus, with a veena, a book and a rosary. Her first note wakes the world into sound and gives people speech, and they call her Saraswati and Vagdevi. It was the fifth of the bright half of Magha, kept since as Vasant Panchami.
Vasant Panchami katha: Saraswati's appearance (Drik Panchang; Hindi vrat katha retellings)
Sources: Vasant Panchami katha: Saraswati's appearance (Drik Panchang; Hindi vrat katha retellings)
King Raivata takes his daughter Revati to Brahma to ask whom she should marry; while he waits for the heavenly singers to finish, ages pass on earth; Brahma sends him back to give her to Balarama, and in the Vishnu Purana Balarama shortens the too-tall bride with his ploughshare.
After killing Hiranyakashipu, Narasimha's fury will not cool; in the Shiva Purana Shiva becomes the winged beast Sharabha and lifts him away, while in the Bhagavata Lakshmi dares not approach and the boy Prahlada calms him with a bow.
After the war Rama tells Sita before the assembly that he fought for his honour, not for her; she answers him and walks into a pyre, and Agni himself carries her out unburnt; later tellings say the woman in Lanka was only her shadow and the real Sita had waited in the fire.
Looking for Lakshmi, Vishnu sits in an anthill on the Venkata hill, and Brahma and Shiva come as a cow and calf to feed him. The Chola king's cowherd, finding the cow dry, follows her and swings his axe; the god rises from the anthill and takes the blow. The wound on his head is why the image wears camphor, and why pilgrims give their hair.
Shesha, eldest of the thousand naga brothers, leaves them for their envy and malice and does austerities until his body dries to sinew; Brahma asks him to hold the unsteady earth, and he goes below and bears it on his head; the epic's last books show him leaving the dying Balarama as a white serpent going home to the sea.
The demon Durgama wins all the Vedas from Brahma; worship stops, rain stops, and a hundred years of drought follow. The goddess appears with countless eyes and weeps for nine days until the rivers fill, feeds the world from her own body as Shakambhari, then kills Durgama and takes his name: Durga.
A demon made from Kama's ashes takes half the strength of any foe; the gods offer their bodies to a great fire, Lalita rises from the light, and she chooses Kameshvara with a garland.
The boy Murugan asks Brahma what Om means, and when Brahma cannot say, locks him up; when Shiva comes to ask for his release, the son teaches the father, and at Swamimalai the boy's shrine stands on the hill above Shiva's.