Purana

Published on 29th September, 2019, in Mid-day In the Vedas, one does find references to individual goddesses, like Usha, Vak, and Aranyani who represent dawn, speech, and forests, respectively. In the Puranas, there is Lakshmi, Durga and Saraswati, embodiments of wealth, power and knowledge. However, in practice, Hindus often worship goddesses in groups. In these groups, individual goddesses may not have unique characteristics. What matters is the whole. For example, during Navratri, people worship Nav Durgas. This worship of goddess clusters has a long history. Sometimes the collective has only two women as, during Ganesh puja, his mother Gauri comes, like many Vedic gods, as ..

Published on 23rd December, 2018, in Mid-day. In the Vishnu Purana, we are introduced to the story of Prahalad. We are told he is the son of an asura king, Hiranyakashipu. Because Hiranyakashipu receives a boon from Brahma, he cannot be killed by any human or animal, either inside or outside a dwelling, at day or at night. Therefore, he gains a certain immortality and starts demanding everybody worship him as God. However, Prahalad refuses to accept his father as God, and keeps worshipping Vishnu or Narayan, and keeps saying Narayan is present everywhere, in day and night, within and without. Prahalad prefers to worship ..

Published on 22nd July, 2018, in Mid-day. The story of Gajendra Moksha from the Bhagavat Purana speaks of an elephant king, Gajendra, who is in a state of erotica arousal, and is having fun with his herd of cow elephants in a lotus lake in a heady erotic atmosphere. But the pleasure is destroyed by a crocodile that attacks the elephant king and threatens to drown him under water. The elephant king who is used to power suddenly discovers he is helpless and no one can help him. He, therefore, turns to the one force in the universe that is Lord Vishnu. With his trunk ..

Published on 30th November, 2017, on www.dailyo.in . The word guru traditionally meant "one with gravitas". In recent times, a neo-etymology has become popular where guru is one who takes one from darkness (gu) to light (ru). Different people in different contexts use the word guru differently to refer to different kinds of people. In the Bhagavat Puran, Krishna reveals to Uddhava the twenty-four gurus of the detached ascetic (avadhuta). Here he includes various elements, plants, animals and life-experiences that give the ascetic insight. Thus, guru is the one who provokes insight. But in Skanda Purana, we find the Guru Gita where Shiva tells Parvati ..

Published on 30th July, 2017, in Mid-Day. Many Muslims in Tamil Nadu call themselves Marakkayar, which means seamen, a word that is derived from the Arabic 'markab'. They believe their ancestors were Arab sea merchants who took Tamil wives, or Tamil men who converted to Islam following contact with Arab merchants. They speak Tamil using loan words not only from Sanskrit but also from Arabic and Persian. Unlike Islam in the North that spread through warfare, Islam in South India spread via traders. The traders went as far as Malaysia and Indonesia, which is why these countries have a high Muslim population. In all these ..