Srimad Bhagavatam, Book 10

Govardhan: The Mountain Raised as a Shield

When the cowherds of Vrindavan turn their offering from the sky to their own hill, a jealous Indra sends a flood to punish them — and the boy Krishna lifts Govardhan on one finger to hold the storm off for seven days.

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.24.24

Krishna, still a cowherd boy in Vrindavan, watched the village prepare its yearly offering to Indra, king of the gods who sent the monsoon. He asked his father Nanda a plain question: did the rain come from Indra's mood, or from the clouds that formed over their own hill, Govardhan, and the cattle it fed?

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.24.28

Persuaded, the cowherds turned their offering toward the hill and the cattle instead of the sky. Indra, denied his worship, read it as insult and loosed the Samvartaka clouds — the ones that end an age — to drown Vrindavan in rain that did not stop.

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.25.19

Krishna lifted Govardhan hill on the smallest finger of his left hand and held it aloft like an umbrella. The cowherds and their cattle sheltered beneath it for seven days and nights while the storm broke uselessly against the raised stone.

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.25.30

Indra, humbled, called down his own mount Airavata and came to bow at Krishna's feet — the first open sign, to those watching, of exactly who the cowherd boy was. Govardhan Puja is still kept the day after Diwali, in the form of the offering the cowherds first turned toward the hill.

Glossary for this passage

Govardhan: a sacred hill near Vrindavan, worshipped directly as a form of Krishna rather than merely the site of the story.
Indra: king of the Vedic gods and lord of rain and thunder — powerful, but shown here as capable of wounded pride.
Samvartaka: the name given to the dissolution-clouds Indra releases — the same clouds said to end a cosmic age.
Govardhan Puja: the festival, kept the day after Diwali, that re-enacts the cowherds' offering to the hill instead of the sky.