Stories 6
Tradition: All traditions · clear
Aditi wins the first and the last offering
Why the Soma sacrifice opens and closes with a pot of rice for Aditi: the earth, left out of the rite, confounds it until she is given a share.
Purusha and Narayana on the waters
The cosmic person of the Purusha Sukta and the Narayana who rests on the waters are fused into Vishnu's cosmic identity, pictured as Anantashayana.
The sacrifice in dwarf form wins the earth
In the Shatapatha Brahmana Vishnu, as the sacrifice itself, takes dwarf form and strides the earth back from the asuras for the gods.
The sacrifice of Purusha
Purusha has a thousand heads, eyes and feet and is all that has been and will be.
Vasishtha and Agastya are born from the jar
At the sight of the nymph Urvashi the seed of Mitra and Varuna falls into a water jar; Agastya rises from the jar and Vasishtha is found on a lotus. Later texts add the quarrel with Nimi as the reason Vasishtha needed a new birth.
Vishvakarman, the maker of everything, and the king who gave away the earth
Rigveda 10.81-82 ask who made the world and from what wood; the Brahmanas tell of King Vishvakarman Bhauvana, whose gift of the earth the Earth refused.