Reading Notes: Sacred Tales of India Reading Part B

A brother, Kausik, and sister wanted to do something to worship the goddess Siva and her husband Parvati, so they started taking care of a bull, which was Siva's favorite animal. Unfortunately, some thieves came and took the bull, so they went out looking for it. While in the forest, they met celestial beings doing a ceremony and the beings told them that the bull would come back if they  performed the Budhashtami ceremony on their own. Parvati was pleased with their sacrifice, so she granted them each a wish. The brother asked to be a king, and the sister asked to marry one of the celestial light beings in the forest. She ended up marrying Yama, the god of the dead. One day in the forest, she saw her own mother suffering in the equivalent of hell and asked Yama to save her mother. He said the only one who could was Gautami, a young woman who also performed the same ceremony. Her terrible brother refused to give up his throne to help their own mother!  a complete stranger, gave up her wish to help Bijaya's mother.

Chand fighting Padma, Dolls of India

Another interesting story from the section I read was from "Chand, the unbeliever". Mahadeo, god of earth, visited in human form and saw a woman of low caste but fell for her anyway. Their daughter was born completely full-grown. Bhagavati (Mahadeo's wife) sees a random woman walking alongside him and immediately feels jealousy, so she tears out one of Padma (his daughter)'s eyes. Padma and her new friend Neta met a millionaire named Chand. However, Chand didn't believe that Padma was the daughter of a god, so her refused to worship her. Padma ended up marrying Jaratkaru and had sons and daughters that were snakes. Padma sent her sons and daughters to bite Chand's children, but he still refused to worship her. She went on to even reincarnate her aspara couple friends as one of Chand's new children to try and convince him that he should worship Padma.


Bibliography: Sacred Tales of India By Dwigendra Neogi. Link to reading guide.