The Story of Amrita

In order to gain Amrita, the drink for immortal life, and some of the other things after the recreation of the universe the gods and the asuras had to work together. They all wanted it but they did not want to work together for it. Since they were desperate for it they decided to work together but the asuras planned on stealing it afterwards. To get the actual Amrita out of the ocean they had to churn the ocean of milk so that it would come up out of the ocean.

Everyone decided to get together in the ocean and set up the contraption for it. For the base they had the tortoise that was an avatar of Vishnu, the pole was Mount Mandara, and to actually churn it they used Vasuki, the serpent king, as the rope.

Sometime later

The gods took the tail while the asuras got the head for the churning. They finally started to churn it to get the Amrita out of the ocean but before they got it a poison started to come out. Everyone started freaking out and no one knew what to do. It was starting to go all over the universe and was causing destruction. At the advice of Vishnu, they decided to approach Shiva so that he could drink the poison and save everyone. He agreed to do so and when he was drinking it Paravati decided to choke him to stop the poison from spreading to his body. She succeeded but it ended up changing the color of his throat to blue. From that point on Shiva got the name Neelakanta because of it.

The gods and the asuras kept churning and churning but eventually they got tired. Vishnu then granted them the strength to continue, but nothing was happening. They were getting no results for it but they still kept churning and churning. This lasted for a thousand years before they finally saw some results.They could see stuff coming out of the ocean. It produced Lakshmi, Chandra, Rambha, Sura, wishing tree, white horse, a white elephant, the cow of plenty, Sankha, Dhanus, a jewel, and the goddess of wine. In the end it finally produced the Amrita in the hands of the sage, Dhanvantri but the asuras got it first. Vishnu changed into his form of Mohini and gave the asuras liquor while the gods would get the amrita. The asuras figured it out and tried to grab the Amrita. Some drops fell on the earth which later became gem mines. The son of Indra however ran away with it and the four places he stopped at became the sites for the Kumb Mela because he dropped some drops there.

Sanatan Society  Peter Marchand
Kshir Sagar  Wikipedia (2016)

Churning the Ocean of Milk (2011)

Author's Note: In this story I wrote about what happened during the churning and why they actually did it in the first place. There was not a lot of details on it so I decided to write about it and hopefully add some more information on what happened. This story explains how all these people are reborn, how Shiva got the blue throat and became known as the Neelkanta. I also chose this image because it shows a lot of what happened during the actual episode of the churning. It describes a lot of the details, which is why I chose it.