The Boar Who Lifted the Earth

The sages told the Pandavas of Varaha, the great boar - the third descent of the Lord Vishnu upon the worlds - who dived into the cosmic ocean to lift the drowned Earth back into her place, and slew the demon who had dragged her down.

There was a mighty demon named Hiranyaksha, the brother of Hiranyakashipu, an asura of terrible strength and overweening pride. In his arrogance he made war upon the order of the worlds, and he did a thing of cosmic violence: he seized the Earth herself - the goddess Bhumi, the very ground of all life - and dragged her down from her place, plunging her into the depths of the primordial waters, the boundless cosmic ocean, and hiding her there beneath the deep. With the Earth submerged and lost in the waters, all of creation was thrown into ruin; there was no ground for living things to stand upon, no soil for the sacrifices and the works of the world, only the endless waters closing over the drowned Earth. Creation itself could not go forward while the Earth lay sunk in the deep.