Vayu Dev : The god of Wind

 

VAYU DEV: GOD OF WIND

 Vayu dev ( Vayu God ) is the god of air and wind.Other names of Vayu dev is Pawan, Anil and Mukhaya Prana. At some places he is also considered as the deity of life as without air, we are unable to live a fraction of second.So this shows the importance of air in our life. Vayudev is one of the five essentials elements or Panchmahabhoota from which our body is made up of.

     He is one of the adityas (sons of Devi Aditi). He has an important place after Devraj Indra, Surya Dev and Agni Dev in SwargaLok. It is considered that Vayu is heroic and powerful in nature as he moves he creates lot of noise around him. Vayu dev can be described as a male deity having white flag in hand. He rides a deer who is also the symbol of beauty and speed.

Parents:

     Father of Vayu Dev is Maharishi Kashyapa and mother is Devi Aditi. Maharishi Kashyapa was one of the seven great sages and Devi Aditi was the daughter of Prajapati Daksh.

Abode : 

    Abode of Vayu Dev is PawanLoka where he resides.

Weapon:

        Weapons of God of Wind are Mace and goad. He also holds a white flag in his hand.

Mount or Vehicle :

      Mount of Vayu Dev is Deer or gazelle lwhich he uses to reach his targeted place.

Consort :

     Wife of God of Wind is Svasti.

Childrens :

     Lord Hanuman ( great devotee of Lord Ram ) And Bheema ( one of Five Pandavas ) are the spritual sons of Pawan Dev.

Stories :

   Vayu Dev is one of the important deity of our Hindu Culture, so there must be many stories related to him. Some of these are as follows :

 How Vayu Dev became the spritual father of Lord Hanuman?

   There are various stories related to birth of Lord Hanuman which are quite similar to each other in many aspects and some of them are :

   Punjikasthala was a celestial nymph of Swarglok. She was an extremely beautiful woman. Once she disturbed the penance of a sage and that sage got angry and he cursed Punjikasthala that," You have violated my penance, I curse you that you may be born as a monkey in the world of death".

   This frightened Punjikasthala and she started apologizing to that sage. The sage took pity on her and told her that ,"even after taking birth in the monkey clan, you will remain in this beautiful form and you will give birth to such a great son, because of which you will be worshiped as a goddess".

   Then after some time she born as monkey in a money clan but she was extremely beautiful. She was married to Vanaraj Kesari. They both are devotee of Lord Shiva. 

   They dont have any child so they did penance to Lord Shiva to attain lord shiva as child. Being happy with the penance of Anjana and Kesari,Lord Shiva gave them their desired boon. After sometime when Devi Anjana was having a child ,Lord Shiva gave part of his powers ( ansh ) to Vayu Dev and asked him to place the ansh of Mahadev in Anjana's womb through her ear. 

    Vayu Dev agreed to do this, Lord Shiva was happy to hear this so he asked Vayu Dev to ask for a boon. On this Vayu Dev said that Hey Mahadev, I want this child would be my spritual son and I would be his gaurdian". 

  Lord Shiva gave him the boon what vayu dev asked for. And vayu dev done the same thing which Lord Shiva had told him.

     There is also a story that Once Dasharatha- King of Ayodhya have no childrens from his queens, so he did a Yagna to get child and from that Yagna he distributed the havi received from Yagya among his three queens.  

   It is believed that by the grace of Vayu Dev , share of this havi was taken away by air and that share fell at the place where Devi Anjani was doing penance of Vayu Dev to get a son. Devi Anjani ate that havi and she became pregnant and thus Lord Hanuman was born. In this way Vayu Dev became spritual father of Lord Hanuman.

   Their are many more stories related to birth of Lord Hanuman and how Vayu Dev became spritual father of him which we can find in various texts and that we listen from different persons. 

When Vayu Dev got angry and absorbed back all the air from earth :

    It is believed that Vayu dev is the spritual father and guardian of Lord Hanuman. Once Lord Hanuman who had powers from his birth, in his childhood he was hungry and want to eat something. He saw a shining fruit between the leaves of tree. He wanted to eat it , so he fly high to reach that fruit. But it was not fruit it was our sun. 

    When Hanuman was engulfing the sun god , Devraj Indra hitted Lord Hanuman with Vajra due to which Lord Hanuman got fainted and started falling on earth from sky. Vayu Dev saw this and caught him and went into a cave. 

  Seeing condition of his son, Vayu dev got angry and in his anger he absorbed the every pinch of air from this world due to which a chaos was created and all living things got fainted and began to die in absense of air.

    Everyone was horrified by the wrath of Vayu Dev and all the gods did not understand what to do in this critical condition, so they went to Lord Brahma and asked for solution of this problem. Lord Brahma with all deities went there, where Vayu dev was sitting with fainted Lord Hanuman.

   Lord Brahma calmed the anger of Vayu Dev and brought Lord Hanuman to his senses again.All the gods later gave many boons to Lord Hanuman, due to which Vayu Dev, being pleased, set the wind back everywhere.

                                   || Om Vayave namah ||

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