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Kurma Avatar: The Story of Vishnu's Tortoise Form
Quick Answer: Kurma is the tortoise form Vishnu takes so that Mount Mandara has something solid to rest on while the gods and demons churn the ocean of milk for amrita. In the Bhagavata Purana he enters the water, lifts…
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108 Snails on Buddha's Head: The Story and What Scripture Actually Says
Quick Answer: There is no snail story anywhere in Buddhist scripture. The Pali canon describes the Buddha's body twice over, in the Lakkhana Sutta (DN 30) and the Mahapadana Sutta (DN 14), and both list 32 marks of a…
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Who Is the Biggest Devotee of Lord Shiva? What the Texts Actually Say
Quick Answer: No Hindu text crowns a single greatest devotee of Shiva. The most striking answer comes from the Bhagavata Purana, which calls Shiva himself the foremost among Vaishnavas, making him the model devotee…
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Parashurama: The Sixth Avatar of Vishnu, and What the Texts Say
Quick Answer: Parashurama is the sixth avatar of Vishnu and the only one who is a brahmin rather than a king, a beast or a god in human form. He beheaded his mother Renuka on his father’s order and then used a boon to…
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Balarama Avatar of Vishnu: Eighth, Not Ninth
Quick Answer: Yes, Balarama is counted as an avatar of Vishnu — and where he appears in a list of ten, he is the eighth, never the ninth. The widespread claim that he “replaces Buddha as the ninth” is wrong: in…
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Kalki Avatar: What the Texts Actually Say
Quick Answer: Kalki is the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, the one who has not come yet. The Bhagavata Purana gives him four verses: he is born in the village of Shambhala to a brahmana named Vishnuyasha, he rides a…
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Does the Jagannath Temple Flag Fly Against the Wind?
Quick Answer: No. The Jagannath Temple has never claimed its flag defies the wind, and the claim appears in no Purana, in no temple record, and in no survey of the temple written before the internet. What people see is…
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How Many Wives Did Krishna Have? What the Bhagavata Says
Quick Answer: Krishna had 8 principal queens and 16,100 other wives, 16,108 in total. The eight queens are Rukmini, Satyabhama, Jambavati, Kalindi, Mitravinda, Nagnajiti, Bhadra and Lakshmana. The rest were women he…
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The 10 Biggest Hanuman Statues in India, by Verified Height
Quick Answer: The biggest Hanuman statue in India is the 187 ft (57 m) Statue of Bhagavan Hanuman at Manav Bharti University in Solan, Himachal Pradesh, finished in 2019. The one usually called the world's tallest is…
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Who Is the Father of Lord Krishna? Vasudeva, Nanda and a Third Answer
Quick Answer: Krishna has 2 fathers. Vasudeva, a Yadava nobleman of the line of Shurasena, is his biological father, and Nanda of Gokula is the man who raised him. His mother is Devaki and his foster mother is Yashoda.…