Stories 5
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
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Tradition: Folk · clear
Folk tale · 2 tellings
Aiyanar, the horseman at the village edge
The Tamil village guardian on horseback was absorbed over the medieval centuries into Shasta, the son of Shiva and Mohini, and the Sanskritising continues today.
Folk tale · 2 tellings · contested
Mohini and the demon who burned himself
A demon wins from Shiva the power to destroy whoever he touches on the head and turns on the giver; Vishnu, as Mohini or as a young brahmachari, tricks him into testing the boon on himself.
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 · 2 tellings · contested
The demon who could burn with a touch
A demon worships Shiva with terrible austerities, offering pieces of his own body.
Folk tale · 2 tellings
Vishnumoorthi comes down in the Theyyam
In north Malabar the man-lion's killing of Hiranyakashipu is not read but danced, by a performer who is believed to become the god.