Hindu Texts

The storyThe Shining Deer — A golden deer leaps through the forest, and Sita asks Rama to catch it.

The storyThe Little Squirrel — A little squirrel rolls in the sand and shakes it onto a bridge of stones.

The storyA Hill Like an Umbrella — Rain pours for days, and a boy holds up a whole hill on one finger.

The storyThe Race in the Garden — Two brothers race around the whole world, and one of them never leaves the garden.

The storyA Flower by the Door — A girl draws a rangoli flower by the front door and sets a tiny lamp in the middle.

The storyColors in the Air — Pink and green powder fills the air, and two old friends laugh and hug.

The storyTwo Kinds of Words — A grandmother tells her grandson that some words were heard and some were remembered.

The storyForward and Backward — A boy repeats a line forward and backward until he knows every sound by heart.

The storySandals on the Throne — A brother carries a pair of sandals home and sets them on an empty throne.

The storyTen Nights of the Ramayana — A town in India puts on the whole Ramayana as a play that lasts ten nights.

The storyOne Afternoon of Dice — A game of dice goes wrong, and a family loses its kingdom in one afternoon.

The storyFollowing Death — A bride walks behind Death himself and will not stop asking.

The storyEvery Action Is a Seed — A girl plants a seed, and her grandfather tells her what his teachers told him.

The storyShoes at the Door — A fourth-grade class visits a Hindu temple in Lemont, Illinois.

The storyWords Older Than Writing — At dawn, a priest lights a fire and sings a hymn that was never first written on paper.

The storyEleven Ways to Say One Verse — A teacher and a student chant one verse forward, backward and braided together.

The storySalt in the Water — A father asks his son to find salt he cannot see.

The storyThree Nights at Death's Door — A boy waits three days at the house of Death, and Death offers him three wishes.

The storyA Story Inside a Story — A storyteller opens one story, and inside it another, and inside that another.

The storyThe Queen Who Sang — A royal woman leaves the palace singing, and people across India sing her songs back.

The storyThe Seal from Mohenjo-daro — Archaeologists find a small clay seal and argue for a hundred years about what it shows.

The storySisters and Brothers of America — A young monk stands up in Chicago in 1893 and begins with five famous words.

The storyThe Bow Falls — In the middle of two armies, the greatest archer of his age sits down and refuses to fight.

The storyThe Night Train — After a double shift, a nurse opens a small paperback to chapter 3.

The storyShow Me Your Form — Arjuna asks to see his friend as he truly is, and then begs him to stop.

The storyInside the Seed — A father hands his son a fig from a great tree and tells him to break it open.

The storyPerhaps He Knows Not — A student reads a 3,000-year-old hymn and is surprised by how it ends.

The storyOne Question in the Hall — A queen dragged into a hall of kings asks one legal question no one can answer.

The storyFour Words, Three Readings — Three teachers, centuries apart, write three commentaries on the same short phrase.

The storyA Small Book in a Cell — Gandhi carries a small Gita to prison and calls it his mother.

The storyA Fire at Mahad — In 1927 a lawyer holds a public burning of an old law book, and the argument has not stopped.

The storyLetters Between Two Farms — A letter from Gandhi reaches Tolstoy, but a book of Tolstoy's reached Gandhi first.

The storyThe Teacher's Teacher's Teacher — A dance student in Naperville learns a Ramayana scene the way it has been passed from hand to hand.

The storyThe Same First Word — A student lays out three commentaries on one verse and finds they all begin with the same word.