Satyavati was the mother of the great sage Vyasa. However, her story is quite interesting, as well as complicated because of all the nested elements. She was born of a fish who had been cursed, given to a king but returned because of her smell, named three times, and impregnated by a sage, who gave her a famous child but returned her virginity. Satyavati’s mother was a nymph (devastri) named Adrika who had been turned into a fish by the curse of a brahmin. One day the semen of King … Continue reading →

Sati literally meant “good one,” or, since it had a feminine ending, “good woman.” It was extended to mean “pure one,” especially a wife who had puri­fied herself in the funeral pyre of their husband. By the modern era sati (suttee in nineteenth-century literature) came to mean “widow burning” (which reformers like Rammohan Roy called “widow murder”). A number of myths pre­sented sati as a natural response of the wife to the death of her husband. Such a death would be in conflict with prohibitions of suicide in the law … Continue reading →

The Sastras (precepts, rules) are a class of texts that cover religion as well as law, medicine, and the (pre-) science of that period. They were classified as tradition (smriti), ranking below the Vedas in sacredness. They have some mythological material, but it is their insight into the context of duty (dharma) according to the goals (vargas), stages of life (asramas), and castes (varnas) that constitute their great value for mythology. Before the Sastras there were three, rather than four, life goals, expressed as the three goals of life (trivargas): … Continue reading →

Sarasvati is a goddess of primary importance. She is accepted by Hindus as the goddess of learning, the arts, and scholarship. However, Sarasvati’s nature is far more complex and her mythology more interesting than is widely known. Sarasvati, whose name means “flowing” and “watery,” has been associated with an ancient river that was quite important in the Vedic period but eventu­ally dried up because of a desertification that was occurring in the region. Dur­ing the early Vedic period Sarasvati was associated with Agni, as one of the three flames of … Continue reading →

The Sapta-Nagas were Ananta, Takshaka, Karka, Padma, Mahapadma, Sank- haka, and Gulika. Iconographically, they all wear the sacred thread of a brahmin, have an extended hood, and may have multiple heads.SAPTA-RISHIS The collective name of the seven most important sages There were seven Sages (sapta-rishis) at the beginning of the era, the current manvantara. The sapta-rishis were Marici, Angiras, Atri, Pulastya, Vasishtha, Pulaha, and Kratu. There are other lists of the seven sages, such as Vasishtha, Atri, Kasiyapa, Visvamitra, Gautama, Jamadagni, and Bharadvaja. They were the witnesses of the many … Continue reading →

The collective name of the seven divine mothers—seven (saptan) mothers (matris or matrikas)—has been associated with Siva both in mythology and iconography. The Brahmanical view in the Mahabharata depicted them as destructive female energies responsible for ill fortune and disease and especially attracted to harming children. The mothers were assimilated into both the Siva myth cycle and that of Devi, the Great Mother. Aspects of the mothers are appropriated by Kali and Durga, while Camundi (or Camunda) simply became a dangerous manifestation of Devi. In the episode of the demon … Continue reading →

In the Bhagavad Gita Sanjaya is one of its four characters—the other being Arjuna, Krishna, and King Dhritarashthra. The idea of boon-granting (vara) had become so common by the time of the late epic literature that a sage like Vyasa Sandstone figure of Camunda, the fierce, protective eight-armed mother, from Orissa, eastern India, ninth century. (The British Museum/Heritage-Images)can give someone, Sanjaya, the power (siddhi) of clairvoyance and clairaudience (distance sight and hearing). This power was called the divine eye (divya-drishti). Through this power, Sanjaya was able to give blind King … Continue reading →

Samsara has the essential meaning of the cycle of rebirths or simply rebirth. Samsara is one of the key concepts in understanding the reason Hindu mythol­ogy can be so complex—figures changing genders from one lifetime to the next, rebirths in lifetimes with different names but carrying from a previous lifetime the results of actions not then completed, and teams of characters being reborn in new relationships or even in reversals of roles from previous lifetimes. Rebirth was not a notion found in the early Vedic myths. There was a Vedic … Continue reading →