It is also associated with two instances of Lord Krishna.
What happened is, once the five Pandavas, (the five brothers from the Mahabharata epic) and their wife were in exile. At that time a saint called and said, ‘I am going to have food with you.’ When the message came, they had no food. They had already eaten and had kept their pots away. Draupadi (the wife of the 5 Pandavas) prayed to Lord Krishna. At the same time, Krishna came to their house and said, ‘Oh I am very hungry.’ When he came in, he saw that there was only one grain of rice stuck to the pot. He picked that one grain of rice and ate it, and turned the pot into an Akshaya Patra. Akshaya Patra means that which never diminishes.
When the saint came with 400 people, Draupadi could feed all of them from the same pot. The more she took from the pot, the more would come from it. It would never go down.
So it is a common expression in India to say, ‘This is an akshaya patra‘, which means it always keeps giving.
If people are very generous and they are always doing seva and contributing to other, then you say, ‘This is an akshaya patra’, means it never goes down; a perennial source.
A magical pot which keeps feeding millions.
The other story is, Krishna had a friend who was very poor. His name was Sudhama. Sudhama means a good place, or a very benevolent place.
So, one day his wife said, ‘We are living in such poverty and Krishna is so rich. Why don’t you go and get something from him. He is your close friend.’
Sudhama said, ‘Okay, I’ll go, but I can’t go to a friend empty handed. I have to take something’. So his wife packed three handful of puffed rice in a scarf and gave it to him. It is like rice crispies.
When Sudhama went to Krishna and Krishna welcomed him, and washed his feet. The story goes that they were such good friends and in the friendship there was so much love that Sudhama forgets to give the rice to Krishna and also forgets to ask him for anything. He came to ask him for a favor but he could not ask him anything because he was so overwhelmed with love. They were so close that he forgot to ask. He could not ask. He could not even speak.