Stories 6
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 94
South India 66
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: Shaiva · clear
Local story · 1 telling · contested
How Mahakal came to Ujjain
King Chandrasena of Ujjain is a devotee of Shiva and a friend of Shiva's attendant Manibhadra.
Local story · 1 telling · contested
Nakkeerar disputes Shiva's poem
The Pandya king wonders whether the scent of a woman's hair is natural or from perfume, and offers gold for the verse that settles it.
Local story · 1 telling · contested
Saraswati's forty-eight letters found the Madurai Sangam
Saraswati lingers on the way to bathe in the Ganga and arrives late.
Local story · 1 telling · contested
Shiva carries earth for an old woman's puttu
The Vaigai floods and the Pandya king orders every household to repair a stretch of the bund.
Local story · 2 tellings · contested
Shiva's sixty-four games in Madurai
The Tamil Thiruvilaiyadal Puranam turns Shiva into Madurai's own god, who walks into the city in disguise across the reigns of fifty-two Pandya kings.
Local story · 2 tellings · contested
The sixty-four games of Shiva at Madurai
Indra, freed of a sin, worships a linga in a kadamba forest.