The Boar Who Retrieved the Earth

Varāha, “the boar”, is the third of the ten best-known avatars of Vishnu, the god who in Hindu tradition preserves the world. His story is about a problem unusual even by the standards of the gods: the earth was missing. It had sunk to the bottom of the cosmic ocean — in the most popular telling, dragged there by the demon Hiraṇyākṣa — and Vishnu took the form of a vast boar to dive down and bring it back.

Who’s who

• Vishnu — the preserver among the great gods, who descends in different forms (avatars) when the world is in danger.
• Varāha — Vishnu’s boar form.
• Hiraṇyākṣa — a mighty demon (daitya), “the golden-eyed”, son of the sage Kaśyapa and Diti.
• Hiraṇyakaśipu — his twin brother, the demon father who would later be defeated by Narasiṃha for the sake of his son Prahlāda.
• Brahmā — the creator god, who shapes the worlds.
• Bhūdevī (also Pṛthvī or Bhūmi) — the earth, understood as a goddess.
• Svāyambhuva Manu — the first father of humankind, who needed the earth to live on.

Where the demon came from

The Bhāgavata Purāṇa gives Hiraṇyākṣa a backstory. Jaya and Vijaya, two gatekeepers of Vishnu’s realm, Vaikuṇṭha, once turned away a group of child-sages who had come to see Vishnu. The sages cursed them to be born on earth as demons. They were born to Diti as the twins Hiraṇyākṣa and Hiraṇyakaśipu — enemies of Vishnu, but destined to be freed by him.

Hiraṇyākṣa is often called the elder brother. Tellings are not uniform about the order of the twins; the Bhāgavata itself describes Hiraṇyakaśipu as the one conceived first and Hiraṇyākṣa as the one born first. The story of Hiraṇyakaśipu and Prahlāda comes later. This one is Hiraṇyākṣa’s.

What Hiraṇyākṣa did

Hiraṇyākṣa’s strength, won through austerities and boons, was so great and his appetite for conquest so complete that he went beyond conquering kingdoms, armies and even the gods. He did what no one had attempted: he seized the earth and dragged it to the bottom of the cosmic ocean.

This is worth pausing on. Most problems in these stories are problems of conflict, shortage or misrule. This was a problem of the earth simply not being where it was supposed to be.

The beings who lived on the earth were left without a home. The gods whose work depended on the earth found their work had nothing to act on. And Brahmā, who had created the earth and watched over it, looked at the place where it had been and found only water. In the Bhāgavata, it is Manu who brings the problem to him: he has been told to bring forth humankind, but where are they to live?

The boar

Brahmā thought, and prayed. And from his nostril — a detail the Bhāgavata Purāṇa presents without apology as entirely natural — a tiny boar emerged, no bigger than a thumb.

Brahmā and the sages around him looked at it, puzzled. Then the tiny boar grew. It grew rapidly, past the size of an elephant, past the size of a mountain, until its scale defied ordinary reasoning. Its tusks gleamed white; its body was massive; it roared, and the sages recognised Vishnu and sang his praises. Using its snout, the boar sniffed out the earth hidden at the very bottom of the cosmic ocean.

It dove.

The fight in the depths

Hiraṇyākṣa, who had been roaming the depths in search of a worthy opponent, met the boar as it rose with the earth. He challenged it and mocked it as a mere forest animal.

What followed was a battle in the cosmic waters: the demon with all his boons and strength against the divine boar. The demon fought with a mace and with magic; Varāha answered with his own mace and his discus. By some accounts the battle lasted a thousand years of divine time. In the Bhāgavata, the end comes when Varāha strikes Hiraṇyākṣa a blow near the ear, and the demon falls.

Hiraṇyākṣa lost. Vishnu in the form of Varāha, the great boar, defeated him and — the act the whole story had been building toward — lifted the earth on his tusks, carried it back to the surface, and set it firmly on the waters so that life could begin again.

The image

The image that has been sculpted and painted for centuries is this: the enormous divine boar standing in the primordial waters, the earth balanced on his tusks, Brahmā and the sages praising him, the waters parting around the god who has just brought the world back from the bottom of everything.

The earth-goddess Bhūdevī (or Pṛthvī) is often part of the image — smaller, grateful, her hands raised as she is lifted. Sometimes Varāha is shown with a human body and a boar’s head, holding her on his arm or shoulder; sometimes he is a complete boar. He regards her with the steady gaze of the preserver who has completed what needed to be done.

Varāha in stone and in temples

The great Varāha sculptures at Udayagiri and Mahabalipuram are among the finest surviving examples of Indian rock-cut art. At Udayagiri, in central India, the Varāha is carved in high relief from the cliff face — the boar enormous, the earth-goddess small beside him, the cosmic rescue preserved in stone for about fifteen hundred years. Mahabalipuram, on the coast of Tamil Nadu, has a cave shrine with a celebrated panel of Varāha lifting Bhūdevī.

Varāha is also worshipped in living temples. The Varāha temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan is dedicated to him. At Tirumala, the tradition holds that the hill belonged first to Varāha, and many pilgrims visit the Varāha shrine there before going for darśana (sacred viewing) of Lord Venkaṭeśvara. Srimushnam in Tamil Nadu is another well-known Varāha temple.

Where the story comes from

• Vedic literature: the image is very old. Texts such as the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and the Taittirīya texts tell of a boar, Emūṣa, who raises the earth from the waters, associated with the creator Prajāpati. There is no demon in these early versions.
• The Viṣṇu Purāṇa tells Vishnu’s lifting of the earth as part of the story of creation at the start of a new cosmic age, again without Hiraṇyākṣa as the cause.
• The Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Book 3) gives the fullest popular telling: the thumb-sized boar from Brahmā’s nostril, the rescue of the earth, Jaya and Vijaya, and the fight with Hiraṇyākṣa.
• The Varāha Purāṇa is named after this avatar and is framed as a teaching Varāha gives to the Earth.

So there is not one single version. In some texts the earth has simply sunk into the waters at the start of creation; in others a demon has taken it there. Both are part of the tradition.

What it means

In the tradition of interpreting the Daśāvatāra, the ten avatars, the earth in this story is often read as more than the planet. It stands for stability — the material world as the ground of human life and possibility. When that ground is taken away, when what should be solid proves to be absent, the preserver takes whatever form is needed to retrieve it. Not always the beautiful form, not always the form expected. Sometimes a boar.

Other readings are common too:

• Vishnu and the Earth as a couple. Bhūdevī is counted among Vishnu’s consorts, and the story is often read with tenderness: the god dives to the bottom of everything to rescue her.
• A humble animal, a divine purpose. A boar roots in mud and water. Many readers find meaning in the fact that the god chose this form, suited to the task rather than to dignity.
• The earth as something to protect. Some modern readers see in the story a picture of care for the earth itself, though that is a newer emphasis rather than a traditional teaching.

The earth was returned. The beings who live on it got their world back. And the boar went back into the ocean of divinity, ready to dive again whenever the earth needs retrieving.

Read on AdiVeda

• Neither Day Nor Night: Narasimha and Prahlada — the story of Hiraṇyākṣa’s brother and the avatar that follows Varāha.
• Varaha Ashtottara Shatanamavali — the 108 names of Varāha.
• The Turtle Who Held the Mountain: Kurma Avatar — the avatar who comes before Varāha.
• Dashavatara Stotram — a hymn to all ten avatars of Vishnu.
• The First Day: How Brahma Created the World — the creator whose world Varāha restores.