Vishnu – Garuda – Part 1 – {Ep.177} – Stories From India Podcast

Now before we begin, I want to point out that today is episode no 200. I know this is episode number 177, but if you count all the bonus and mini episodes in between the regular weekly one, this is number200. So, I just want to begin by thanking you for all your support over the last 3 years. I am excited to continue telling many more stories from our rich culture. Today we’ll hear the story of the birth of Garuda. Garuda is a giant bird who is more powerful than Indra and can single-handedly defeat all Devas! And we’ll see exactly why if a mother has laid eggs, she shouldn’t count her children before they hatch.

Considering that Garuda was the character of the week in Episode 1, it’s only fitting that we’ve come back to him in this milestone episode. It’s a bit of a long story so we’re going to do this in two parts.

Longing for Children

Sage Kashyap was a Saptarishi. Saptarishi, in case you don’t know, literally means Seven rishis. Or Seven wise men. They did many wise things to earn that title. But it’s not just the title. They also have a place in the Sky, in the constellation of the Great Bear or the Big Dipper.

Anyway, Kashyap had several wives. Among other things, he was the father of a lot. I know when some people are called the “Father of the Nation” that’s a figurative term. But in Kashyap’s case, it was literal – Kashyap was the father of 4 major races: the Devas, the Danavas, the Yakshas, and the Daityas. Given his impact on the global population, think of him as an earlier version of Chengiz Khan.

Kashyapa had help with parenting them all. It wasn’t squarely on just his shoulders. He had thirteen wives. In some versions, he had twenty-one.

Well anyway, being in such a well-populated home, two of his childless wives longed for children of their own. They were Vinata and Kadru. They each independently and separately implored Kashyap to use his divine powers to help them.

Wish-granting in motion!

What’s the use of having all kinds of divine superpowers if you don’t use them to help your own family? So Kashyap thought. So he whipped out his notebook and began to make notes. He would need these to craft the right kind of prayer for the right kind of children. It would be easy if his wives wanted ordinary children. But Vinata and Kadru didn’t want ordinary children. Not at all. 

Kadru was pretty clear. She wanted a thousand snake babies. If she had been at Hogwarts, there are no prizes for guessing which house she would have been in. Well, if Kadru had been in Slytherin, her sister Vinata would have definitely been in….. Never mind, I won’t spoil it. Why don’t you listen to the story and make your own judgment? Let’s just say that Vinata asked for just two children who would be far stronger and braver than Kadru’s thousand children.

Kadru stared at her sister suspiciously. I’m getting a whole Gandhari and Kunti vibe here. You’re trying to get your minority children to outdo mine.

“Nonsense,” said Vinata, trying to brush it off nervously with a fake laugh. “No such thing, don’t you know. I’m just trying to make it so that my children have the energy to keep up with your thousand and be good playmates with their brothers”

Kadru didn’t buy it, but she didn’t say anything.

Kashyap didn’t pay any attention either. He moved on to his Yagna, which was basically praying in front of ceremonial flames so that his wives would get the children they wanted.

Indra makes fun of Rishis

Now Indra, as chief of the Devas, was also a child of Kashyap. He was helping his dad bring some firewood for the Yagna. Now a few other Rishis were also helping Kashyap out.

Now, Indra was flying overhead casually twiddling a massive tree trunk between his thumb and forefinger. He glanced down and saw about a dozen Rishis struggling to carry a single tree branch. To him, it looked comical. And being rather insensitive to their plight, he laughed at them. If he had stopped there, maybe they wouldn’t really have done anything. But then he swooped down low and waved the massive tree practically in their faces. 

Rishis curse him back

That sort of playground behavior was not going to let Indra make friends. The Rishis were rather upset by Indra’s arrogance. They didn’t just excuse his behavior. Instead, they chose to curse Indra. They began a side yagna of their own. The Rishis poured ghee into the holy flames and initiated the process of replacing Indra. Yeah, Indra was not a permanent chief of the Devas. He was appointed in that position. That meant just as he had gained the job, he could lose it.

The Rishis asked for an Indra who was more powerful than the current one. One who could fly, one who could change his size at will.

All this distressed Indra, who went running to daddy, hoping for an intervention. Kashyap certainly intervened and the Rishis agreed and accepted Indra’s apology. But part of their Yagna was well in flight. They couldn’t stop the creation of a person who was more powerful than Indra, someone who could fly, who could change his size. But the one thing they could do was to choose not to appoint him the new Indra. And that is what the Rishis agreed to.

Snake babies!

Let’s cut over to Vinata and Kadru. After the very successful yagna, Kashyapa went off to meditate somewhere in the mountains as Rishis often do.

Vinata and Kadru were both ecstatic to discover that they were pregnant. Several months later, they both gave birth. To eggs. Yup, not the thousand snakes that Kadru had hoped for, but a thousand eggs. Now, the eggs presumably contained her snake babies. So Kadru went about tucking her 1000 eggs into a thousand specially prepared cribs with warm bedding. Vinata only had two eggs. They were substantially larger than Kadru’s eggs. 

She had an easier task of thinking up baby names than Kadru did. She called egg number 1 Arun, and Egg number 2 Garuda.

Both moms buckled in and prepared for a long wait.

Impatient Mom

Kadru had to only wait a few years before her eggs all hatched at the same time! All thousand of them. That complicated how quickly she had to ramp up her parenting skills. But there was a plus. It was impossible to forget anyone’s birthday. Her 1000 children were called the Nagas, and they feature in other stories too.

Everything was going great for Kadru and her Snake babies. But Vinata was getting impatient. She looked often at her two eggs and longed for them to hatch. Several more years passed and still nothing. Then one day she thought she saw the Arun egg move a bit. That was exciting! Maybe her baby was getting ready to hatch after all. Or maybe not. The small movement she saw could have been due to vibrations on the floor from all the Nagas moving about.

Based on absolutely no evidence at all, Vinata concluded that it was the former. That Arun was ready to get out. So she did what any mother might do when seeing her baby struggling. She helped him.

She broke open the egg. Just a little and then removed more and more pieces of the shell until she discovered to her horror how wrong she was.

Arun is born

“How could you?” He asked his mom.

“Oh, that’s so sweet! My baby just said his first words” Vinata said, and her eyes began glistening. “I wish I had a video camera”

But that changed pretty quickly when she saw her baby. Arun had not been trying to get out. Despite his perfectly formed power of speech, Arun wasn’t ready to be born. His upper half looked normal and all, but his lower half was just a lump of flesh. 

Arun curses his mom

Vinata drew back in horror at what she had done but it was too late. Arun drew himself up to his full height which wasn’t much. “Your curiosity left me in this state. For that, you and my brother must suffer. You and Garuda will become servants.”

“What wrong has Garuda done here?” His mother asked.

“No, he hasn’t. But the sins of the mother are visited upon the Son,” Arun replied.

“And that could mean you too, Arun. Garuda isn’t even born yet.”

“And mom, you better make sure it stays that way until he is ready,” Arun said. “As for me, I am off. I hear my half-brother Surya the Sun God has an opening on his team – I can drive his chariot, and take him across the sky every day. I heard the pay is good, I get a mini vacation every solar eclipse, and the office is well-lit, warm, and toasty”

Vinata should have been happy for her enterprising young boy. Despite living in an eggshell all his life, he had it all figured out. He had a job with good job security, he had powerful friends and he had a significant impact on the whole planet by keeping the Sun going, regularly around the earth – as ancient Indian science concluded at the time.

But Vinata was not happy. The primary reason for this was her and Garuda’s upcoming servitude to a person or persons unknown.

The Bet

That mystery got resolved quickly enough. One day Vinata and Kadru were out in the garden when they saw an amazing creature. It was a horse called Uchaishravas. This was a very special horse. Though it was as white as snow, that was not the most striking thing about its appearance. The most striking thing about its appearance was that it had seven heads. And that wasn’t all. The horse was flying.

Now you might be wondering where such a wonderful horse came from. Wonder no more. Because it came from the churning of the Ocean. The Churning of the Ocean in case you aren’t familiar is a massive cosmic experiment that we covered back in Episode 51.

Kadru and Vanati both looked at the Uchaishravas in amazement.

“What a beautiful horse! And what an amazing color!” Vinata said

“You mean colors, not color,” Kadru replied. “There were definitely two colors there, the horse was white all over except its tail was black”

“No, no no, dear Kadru. Its tail was definitely white. I distinctly remember it”

But Kadru did not agree. Their argument escalated to the point of a bet. They bet the loser would become the servant of the winner. Now Vinata should really have refused. She knew her son Arun had cursed her to become a servant. And this situation right now seemed to be setting herself up exactly for that.

Paying Uchaishravas a visit

But Vinata was absolutely positive that the horse’s tail was white. So she took the plunge anyway. Without even considering the possibility that Uchaishravas might choose just that day to visit a salon and have his hair dyed.

Well, Uchaishravas did not go to a salon and have his hair dyed, but what happened was effectively that. 

Kadru and Vinata agreed to head to Uchaishravas’s home and check out his tail for themselves.

Vinata, being a little gullible, did not find it the least bit suspicious that before they left Kadru whispered something to her thousand sons. They were secret instructions. The Nagas had a job to do. Kadru would manage it so that she and Vinata would have to take a slightly longer route with multiple pit stops. In the meantime, the Nagas would make a beeline for Ucchaishravas’s home and somehow coil around his tail and make it look black. Now I know what you’re thinking. Snakes can’t make a beeline for any destination because they slither side to side, but that’s a technicality, let’s ignore it.

Sales Call at Ucchaishravas’s

The sisters reached Ucchaishravas’s home and rang the bell. The seven-headed horse was in just at that moment, and he opened the door. Immediately Heads 1, 3, and 4 frowned and said “we don’t want to buy anything”

Kadru hastened to explain that they were not door-to-door salespeople. 

“That’s what they all say,” said Ucchaishravas’s head no 6. “You don’t want to sell anything. You just want to change my whole life for the better, that’s all. And then it’ll be all about how a new hat will look good on me, or a new saddle. Or a new horseshoe. Sorry ladies, I’m not falling for that. I just had a few more Snakes come in and try that, but I flat out told them, even though they tried to slither in”

“But we just want to have a look at your tail!” Kadru cried out in a hurry, eager to get off the topic of the snakes.

“My tail? How rude!” Uchaishravas exclaimed in shock. So strong was his reaction, that he reared on his hind legs in anger and disgust. Ironically, that gave the sisters a glimpse of exactly what they wanted. And at that moment Vinata saw that the tail was black and realized that she had lost.

Kadru saw that too, and it was so masterfully done, she decided to congratulate her children and celebrate with a massive mouse fest for them that night. Maybe she could take them to Disneyland or something. Not for the amusement park rides, but because she had heard it had several human-sized mice, and mice were her children’s favorite dish!

Garuda is born

The sisters returned home but a lot had changed in their behavior. They had departed from their home arm in arm, as equals. But now they returned with Vinata carrying everything for Kadru, while also holding an umbrella over Kadru’s head to keep her cool in the hot summer sun.

Vinata needed some good news, fast. And when she reached home she got it. 

Her second egg had hatched. Garuda had emerged from his shell. He was a bird, an eagle but not like an ordinary eagle. Garuda was strong and powerful. Vinata looked at her son with pride. She knew she and Garuda were bound to serve Kadru and the Nagas, but Garuda would save them. Vinata was sure of it. It was only a matter of time.

I’m going to continue this story, but it’s a bit of a long one. So I’m going to pause here and continue it next week.

Some notes on the show

Kashyapa is a Saptarishi. One of the 7 hall-of-fame rishis, Kashyapa also married 13 of Daksha’s daughters. You might remember Daksha as the Goat-headed King from Episode 129. In lesser known facts, the name Kashmir originates from this same Rishi – Kashyap because he drained the Kashmir valley and made it habitable. Kashyap also was cursed because he got a little greedy, and was reborn as Vasudeva. But both of those are stories for future episodes.

One of you asked about the relationship with the Phoenix. The Phoenix which appears in Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and even Chinese and Japanese mythology has no exact parallel in Indian mythology. A lot of sources approximate Garuda as the closest equivalent. But the analogy falls short on several counts. Garuda and the Phoenix are both immortal, but Garuda does not need to burn and regenerate from the ashes. While Garuda can change his size at will, a Phoenix is confined to the usual size range of birds, you know from when they are newborn baby chicks to when they are full-grown adult birds. 

Garuda is also a person, capable of speech and all that. And his tears don’t have healing powers as the Harry Potter series implied. But both have feathers that are quite powerful. A single feather from Garuda’s wings can bear the weight of the entire world. Which makes you wonder how the Earth might have reacted every time Garuda took flight or landed.

More information about Phoenixes: link

And a statue of Garuda from Cambodia: link

Next Time

But we’ll learn more about Garuda in the next episode as we continue his story, including how he eats giant monsters for a snack, how he takes on the entire Deva army, single-handedly, as well as his meeting with Vishnu.