Stories 8
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: Shaiva · clear
Temple legend · 1 telling · contested
Brahma drives Lingaraj's chariot
Brahma comes to Bhubaneswar for the coronation of Lingaraj.
Origin · 5 tellings · contested
How Shiva became half woman
Brahma makes a world of male beings that cannot multiply.
Temple legend · 2 tellings · contested
Ravana loses the atmalinga
Ravana wins Shiva's own linga by fierce penance, to take home to Lanka.
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.
Festival story · 2 tellings
Shiva the begging farmer of the Gajan
At Bengal's Chaitra Gajan devotees become Shiva and his ganas, act out his marriage and beg from house to house; the god is a poor householder scolded by his wife.
Origin · 6 tellings · contested
The birth of Ganesha
Parvati wants a guard of her own and shapes a boy from the paste on her body.
Legend · 8 tellings · contested
The fifth head and the skull that would not fall
Brahma grows a fifth head, and with it pride or a false word.
Temple legend · 1 telling · contested
The lord of the single mango tree
Shiva is worshipped under a lone mango tree, which names the place Ekamra.