Stories 7
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.
Father Sky and Mother Earth
The Rigveda praises Heaven and Earth as the parents of gods and creatures; the Aitareya Brahmana tells how they parted and were married again.
Prithu milks the Earth
King Prithu, son of Vena, makes the Earth yield grain by milking her as a cow; told as a cosmic milking in the Atharvaveda, a friendly one in the Mahabharata and a chase in the Puranas.
The Earth rests for three days
In Odisha, Assam and Tulu Nadu the Earth is said to have her monthly rest once a year; for three days no one ploughs or digs.
The boar beyond the seven hills
A boar keeps the wealth of the Asuras beyond seven hills. Vishnu, the sacrifice hidden in the earth, tells Indra of it; Indra shoots through the hills with a bunch of darbha grass and Vishnu carries the spoil to the gods. In the Puranas the boar is Vishnu himself, who lifts the earth and kills Hiranyaksha.
The hymn to the Earth
Atharvaveda 12.1 praises the Earth in sixty-three verses as mother; the Rigveda has a three-verse hymn and a funeral verse.
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.