The Mountain Held Up by One Finger

In the village of Gokul the cowherds had long kept a yearly rite for Indra, god of rain and thunder. It was their way of giving thanks for the rains that fed their land and their beasts. Krishna grew up among them, and as a boy he began to ask about it out loud. It was not Indra alone who kept them alive, he said. It was Govardhan Hill itself. The hill gave the cows their grazing. It held the forests. It fed the rivers the village lived on.

He persuaded the village. Their gratitude was misplaced, he said, or at least incomplete. That year, instead of giving their harvest and their worship to Indra, he had another idea. Turn it to Govardhan Hill, which was the true source of the plenty round them.