The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars rotate constantly around the holy peak of the golden Mount Meru. Its snow-capped and rugged kiss against the clouds is the home of the Gods, the divine beings casting fortunes down to Earth. Meru is the center of all, residing in the middle of all three plains: the physical, metaphysical, and spiritual beings on Earth circling its mighty stature. Brahma, the Creator himself, sleeps in the pit of Meru's iron heart. Meru cannot be seen or touched by mortal eyes and hands, for it remains in a plane of divinity.
At the bottom of Mount Meru is the legendary forest of Himmavanta, and it is there the Himalayas lie. The Himalayas are the physical foothills of the great celestial mountain, and they are composed of other peaks and mountains that hold cultural significance and religious symbolism. The mountains scattered around Mount Meru are the homes to other Gods and divinities.
Mountains hold great places in the hearts of the Indian peoples, whether as homes to Indian divinities or as something divine themselves. Their peaks remain untouched by the desire of their followers to mar the white snow with heavy boot prints, for there is a sacredness curled around their rock. In myth, mountains may evoke the spirituality of their audience. In India, mountains are honored from the ground. People walk their slopes to praise them like divinities, crossing into their valleys but leaving the colder heights of the mountains for the Gods.
In this storybook you will learn about specific mountains and their stories, as well some of the Gods and Goddesses with whom they are intertwined. Mountains have extreme importance in Indian mythology and they are often the big backdrops of the tale.
India is riddled with mountains, so it makes sense for their stories to hold mountains in such esteem. It also makes sense for mountains, as such great symbols of power and beauty, to be the homes of Gods or celebrated as Gods themselves.
This storybook, The Range of Mountains, takes a different approach to the traditional storytelling of Indian myth by not making the mountains the backgrounds or devices of action but by telling a tale through their perspective.
Image Information: Mount Meru as Divided by the Three Planes, from RGDN
Image Information: Central Meru with Lotus-Like Arrangement of Continents, from Research Gate and explained at Decode Hindu Mythology.
The storybook includes four different stories. The first is the tale of broken friendship between Vayu, the Wind-God, and Mount Meru which led to the creation of Sri Lanka. Narada, one of the seven supreme sages whose skill of creating chaos even the Greek Goddess Eris would have admired, plays the role of a trickster in the first story as well as in the second.
The second story is a slightly embarrassed tale of how the Vindhya mountains were tricked into unbalancing the world by Narada and the cleverness of a mountain guru named Agastya.
The third takes a comical approach to an otherwise serious story as a herb-covered Himalayan mountain peak, Dunagiri, narrates their adventures of being carried off by Hanuman to Sri Lanka.
The fourth story is one which negates the response to the kidnapping of Dunagiri and Nanda Devi's dislike of Hanuman. This story also creates an important relationship between the mountains and divinity by telling the story of how the Avatar of Durga became the mountain Nanda Devi. The story is bursting with Gods and the mountains, turning them into single characters that are both a divine being and a mountain.
Author's Note: To Connect the Divine and Mountains a Little More...
Image Information: