Stories 4
All kinds
Origin
Legend
Local story
Folk tale
From the epics
Festival story
Temple legend
In stone and bronze
How a tradition frames it
Everywhere
Pan-India 95
South India 67
West India 30
East India 22
North India 15
The Himalaya 12
Northeast India 5
Southeast Asia 4
Central India 4
devotionbooncreationdisguisesupremacycursemarriagepenancepridetestdancepilgrimagesacrificebirthemanationfirebeheadingdemon slayingdesireiconographyausteritychurningcombined formcosmogonyhomecominglingapoisonrebirthriveratonement
Tradition: Folk · clear
Folk tale · 1 telling · contested
Brahm Baba of Mithila, a false friend
Every Maithil village keeps a Brahma Sthan, a peepal or banyan to the west.
Folk tale · 1 telling
Manasa and the merchant who would not bow
Shiva's neglected daughter, the snake goddess Manasa, kills a Shaiva merchant's sons one by one until his daughter-in-law wins them back and he yields.
Folk tale · 2 tellings
Shiva takes up the plough
Rameswar Bhattacharya's 18th-century Bengali poem makes Shiva an illiterate, penniless villager who has to farm to feed his family.
Folk tale · 1 telling · contested
The cow that milked a stone
A milkman's cow leaves the herd each day and lets her milk fall on a stone in the forest.