Pundalika
The city of Pandharpur in southern Maharashtra, in peninsular India, has the famous temple of Vithoba, a form of Krishna. The shrine’s origin is related to one Pundalika who lived with his wife and old parents. He was very devoted to his parents. Far away in the city of Dwaraka, Krishna heard about the beautiful […]
Prahlad
Prahlad was born to King Hiranyakashipu, a powerful asura (demon) king, who desired immortality and sought to be worshipped as a Bhagwan. After performing bhakti and severe penance, Hiranyakashipu was granted a boon by Brahmaji that he could not be killed by a man or a beast, neither indoors nor outdoors, neither during the day […]
Nachiketa, the child Rishi
Nachiketa was a very inquisitive little boy. One day, his father performed a grand yajna, in which he invited several priests and gifted cows and bulls to them. Nachiketa was not happy to note that the animals being donated by his father, were old and useless. He thought, “My father will gift me to one […]
Dhruv
Dhruva literally means unshakable, immovable, or fixed. Dhruva was born to a king named Uttanapada and his wife Suniti. The king had another wife named Suruchi and a son Uttama. Once when Dhruva was five years old, he saw Uttama sitting on his father’s lap at the King’s throne. Dhruva also wanted to sit on […]
Ashtavakra
Ashtavakra was born with eight deformities in his body. He was born, in a town called Videha, present day Janakpur, Nepal. He was named Ashtavakra–Ashta means Eight and Vakra means a curve or a deformity. While Ashtavakra’s mother Sujata was pregnant, his father Kahoda would recite Vedas to her. The unborn genius Ashtavakra, even in […]
Andala
Andala, also known as Godadevi, Kothai and Nachiyar, was the only female Alvar among twelve Hindu poets of South India. She was affiliated with the Shri Vaishnav tradition of Hindu tradition. She was posthumously considered an avatar of the Bhudevi. It is believed that she lived in the middle of the seventh or eighth century […]
Ahilyabai
Ahilyabai Holkar was a vibrant young Hindu girl from a middle-class family who rose to become the ruling queen of Indore within the Maratha kingdom. She established the city of Maheshwar (currently in Madhya Pradesh) as the seat of the Holkar dynasty. Born in 1725 in Chondi, Maharashtra, to Marathi Hindu shepherd parents, Ahilyabai’s early […]
Adi Shankaracharya
Shankaracharya was a prodigious child, believed to be a partial avatar of Bhagwan Shiva, who descended to spread the teachings of ancient Hindu spiritual texts across Bharat Varsha. He was born in 788 CE in the small town of Kalady in Kerala, to his pious and devout parents, Shivaguru and Aryamba. They named him Shankara, […]
Abhimanyu
Abhimanyu was a matchless warrior, whose bravery and extraordinary valor at the young age of sixteen became legendary in the great Mahabharata. As the son of the great Kuru warrior Arjun and Subhadra (sister of Shri Krishna and Balaram) he inherited both the valor of Indraprastha and the wisdom of Dwaraka. While still in his […]