Myths & Legends of India - JM Macfie

Trust a foreigner to write a concise book on the myths and legends of Indian mythology! This book was lying in my old book shelf since a few years now - dunno how it landed there! Everytime I visited my parents house, I would plan to read this book...it never happened. During this trip, I actually got to read this book and even finish it!

I loved the Amar Chitra Katha comics which had really cool stories about Indian mythology - this book is along the lines of Amar Chitra Katha. It has a wide range of stories on Indra, Brahma, Rama, Krishna and a whole bunch of other deities.

Some snippets from the book:

There are four ages (yuga): Krita, Treta, Dwapara and Kali yuga, each lasting 1.728M, 1.296M, 0.864M and 0.432M years respectively. Each is an incremental multiple of 0.432M starting from Kali yuga. After each of these yugas the universe, cosmos etc is destroyed and re-created. One thousand such cycles equals 1 day of the Lord Brahma and Lord Brahma's life span is 100 years. Whew!

Gods and demons were born from the same father - Kashyapa, the mind-born son of Brahma. Kashyapa had eight wives. Aditi, the mother of the 33 Gods (12 Adityas, 8 Vasus, 11 Rudras and 2 Ashwins), Diti was the mother of the demons, Manu the mother of men and the rest were mothers of beasts, birds, trees etc. Amazing!

The Churning of the Ocean is an interesting story, which tells us that neither the gods nor the demons were immortals. So in order to gain immortality, both the gods and the demons decided to churn "amrita" from the sea of milk. They used the Mount Meru and the snake for churning the sea to produce the amrita, the elixir for immortality. However, greed got to the demons and they waged a war against the gods to keep the amrita for themselves. At this point Vishnu intervened and tricked the demons. However, Rahu demon managed to disguise himself and drink the amrita. The Sun and Moon noticed this and while the amrita was in Rahu's throat, Sun and Moon informed Vishnu who cut off Rahu's head…..although Rahu lived on, he has never forgiven Sun and Moon for being the whistle blowers and hence the eclipses! :D I love such stories….

The book is filled with stories about Rama, Savitri, Shakuntala, Agatsya, Durvasa etc. It is a quick read, because each chapter is a story in itself.

For someone from the younger generation who is interested in knowing all about Indian mythology, this book is a good starter. Why I say younger generation is because the "parents variety" would find this very superficial and very "English" flavored.