Aditi's Vow

Later, when Aditi's sons, the gods, had been driven from heaven by the Daityas, the demon sons of Diti, Aditi, the mother of the gods, grieved like a woman with no protector. One day Kaśyapa came out of a long meditation and came to her hermitage, and found it joyless. She gave him a seat and honoured him, and he asked her: Is all well with the brahmins, good woman, and with dharma and with the people? Has a guest gone away from this house unhonoured? Were the fires not fed in my absence? Are your sons well? I see by your face that you are not.

All is well, said Aditi. But our fortune and our place have been taken by our rivals. Protect us, my lord. Think how my sons may have them again. Kaśyapa smiled and said: How great is the power of Viṣṇu's māyā, the power of illusion that binds the world by affection. What has the body, made of the elements, to do with the Self beyond nature? Whose are husband and sons? It is delusion. Worship the Lord Viṣṇu, who dwells in the heart of every creature. He will grant what you want.

How shall I worship him? asked Aditi. And Kaśyapa taught her the payovrata, the vow of milk, which Brahmā had once taught him when he wished for children: for twelve days in the bright half of the month of Phālguna she should live on milk and worship the lotus-eyed Lord with the highest devotion, and at the end feed the brahmins and the poor and even the outcastes. This is the highest worship of the Lord, he said. It is every sacrifice and every vow, the marrow of austerity. Keep it, and the Lord will soon grant your wishes.

Aditi kept the vow for twelve days without slackening, her mind fixed on the Lord, and the Lord appeared to her and promised to be born as her son. The Lord told her to keep it secret, and Kaśyapa came to know of it by his meditation. He knew that a portion of Viṣṇu had entered him, and he placed in Aditi the seed he had long stored by his austerity, as the wind kindles fire in wood. And Aditi bore the Lord as her son, the dwarf Vāmana.

The dwarf went as a young brahmin student to the sacrifice of Bali, lord of the Daityas, and asked him for three paces of land, measured by his own foot. When Bali gave them, the dwarf grew until all the worlds had their place in his body; with one stride he covered the earth, and with the second the heaven that Bali had won, and no room was left for a third. So Bali was bound, and nothing of all he had taken from Aditi's sons was his any more.