In this episode, we’re covering two Odisha folk tales. The first story is very much related to the sunset bow and arrow challenge that most TikTok and Instagram subscribers are tired of seeing, even though the sunset challenge in this story preceded TikTok or Instagram by only a few centuries. The second one will make you thankful that it is just a work of fiction. Otherwise scientists all over the world will be left scratching their heads for a long time.
First of all let me begin by saying that I do my best on this show to tell you facts as accurately as I can. So when I told you for example that Hanuman almost ate the Sun, I wasn’t wrong. The operative word being “almost”. I also had the Sun God, Surya himself appear in an episode or two- here and there, so you know that the Sun is alive and is a God.
And throughout my show I never ever gave you the impression that there might be more than one Sun in the sky. But as if to prove that this story is indeed a work of fiction, there were extra suns. And not just one more or two more suns. There were six more suns!
How did the sky work with 7 suns? Well, I can tell you how they imagined it worked. In the story, each Sun was just a big ball of something hot that went up one side of the Earth and dipped down the other, slowly extinguishing until it popped up on the other side again. It was an inescapable thought that the Sun must be causing all the heat and light.
The scene was the council of a tribe in Odisha. There were seven council members. To keept things easy, I’m just going to name them after the seven dwarves – you know, from Snow White? Doc was the oldest and he called the council meeting to order by stating that they were here to discuss a dire emergency that had the potential to destroy all life on Earth. Climate Stasis.
The problem with this climate was that it wasn’t changing at all!
Everyday it was the same thing. It was unbearably hot!
“I can’t take it anymore,” said one council member. “I got sunburn even when I was indoors all day!”
Another member, who was also the barkeeper at the local pub, chimed in that their water reserves had all dried up. He had tried adding steam to water down their drinks but people caught on pretty quick.
Truth be told, these complaints were not new. The scientists in the tribe had long been complaining about how it was necessary to bring about at least 2 degree Celsius of cooling if they were to have any chance of survival. Council members had in public proclaimed support for the global cooling idea but only in very vague terms. In private they had taken no actions.
Hey, from their perspective it meant more commercial opportunities. The entrepreneurial minds at the table were already dreaming of new ideas – they could market indoor sunscreen! Or flavored steam cubes to add to drinks. They really couldn’t see a problem here.
But that was about to change.
A maid was serving them food, because these council members liked to eat while they worked. Though some tribespeople suspected the council’s focus was the food. And they only discussed policy matters to fill the gap between the soup and fish curry.
Grumpy was the first to spot it. Mt fish curry has no fish in it!
“Oh it does,” answered the maid. “I made sure every dish has at least one Tengra in it”
The council members were stunned into silence.
“I want Hilsa in my fish curry! I won’t eat Tengra. I want my money back” protested Dopey.
“We aren’t in a restaurant, Dopey” Doc said. Turning to the maid he asked for an explanation.
“This is all because of our sea levels are dropping. If this goes on there won’t be any fish left. And then no more fish curry.” The maid replied and then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “How do you not know all this? Everyone in the tribe knows this. We teach this in our schools now, after our climate scientists gave us all these conclusions in their climate report” she paused and asked. “You never actually read those reports did you?”
“Umm.. of course we did” said Doc. “We were just testing you to see it you did. And it turns out you passed! Congratulations! We’ll give you a bonus”
Obviously they were buying her silence.
The maid replied “are you putting a price on my principles? If so, let me make it absolutely clear to you gentlemen – my principles are not for sale! For anything less than a thousand rupees and 2 weeks extra PTO!”
That was easy enough, so the council agreed and dismissed her.
Then for the first time in its history, the council put its mind together to solve a real problem. They had a crisis on their hands. No fish curry?! What were they supposed to live on? Rice and vegetables? No! They needed to take some urgent action here.
Sneezy suggested importing water from the rings of Saturn. But his voice was quickly drowned out. Happy wanted to sing a song and fix the problem. Hey it had worked for a number of Disney princesses.
Doc wanted to create another Earth and start all over.
But then Dopey spoke up “what if turn off the suns?”
No one spoke so he explained further. “Let’s just turn off all the suns. For a while. Not permanently. Then when the climate changes we can turn them back on.”
“Why, that’s a brilliant idea,” the other council members said.
Dopey gleamed with pride “I got the idea from how we turn off the lights in a room if it’s too bright. Same principle except it’s heat instead of light.”
Doc pondered “it’s funny how we have lights at all what with seven suns you’d think we get 24 hours of bright sunshine in every part of our homes. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is where the switch is. Do you know?”
“Well we can shoot them down with arrows. That seemed to work with our beach balls at our last beach party. And the suns are the same as beach balls. They both are large and round. It’s just that Suns rise and fall a lot slower than beach balls that’s all”
Everyone loved this idea and there was a lot of back-patting and congratulating each other on their teamwork and all that. There was just one little interruption. It was when Sleepy woke up suddenly asking what he had missed and if the fish curry was going to be served soon.
After months of planning, the fateful day arrived. The day the Suns would be turned off. The council members took up the positions they had rehearsed a dozen times.
Doc gave the order “Ready….aim….fire”
6 arrows shot out of bows and went right to the center of their targets. And 6 arrows hit their targets exactly in the center. And just like that 6 Suns deflated and disappeared.
Wait a minute. Six? Only Six? 6 council members turned to the 7th member, big frown on their faces. And then they saw what had happened. Sleepy had fallen asleep.
Well he was hastily woken up. I suppose one or maybe all of the council members could just as easily have fired another arrow and took out the final Sun. But they didn’t want to do extra work. This was Sleepy’s job. And it was easier to criticize him. They were still fussing about, cursing him when it went dark. And cold.
Had someone taken care of the remaining Sun? They tried looking at each other but it was too dark to see. And Sleepy was snoring again. Clearly he hadn’t been the one who fired the Seventh Sun.
It turned out. No one had taken a shot at the seventh Sun. It had survived. Since it was the only surviving Sun, so might as well call it the Sun. It had run away at the first sign of trouble and was hiding behind the mountains. Maybe it was the little bit of diffracted light that gave that away.
But who can blame the Sun for doing this? The only friends he had were all shot. Out of the blue, literally and figuratively. He had to duck for cover from wherever the arrows had come from.
The council meanwhile congratulated themselves on a job well done. And stumbled back home expecting to be served fish curry again. Except in the darkness, they stumbled over a cliff, and let’s just say they posed no further risk to the Seventh
But meanwhile, the servants of the council were fishing to make fish curry for the council. But there weren’t any more fish. You see, the fish were all in the United Animals General Assembly. So were all the mammals, birds, reptiles. They had a big problem that they needed to solve right away.
Their problem was sudden climate change. There was going to be an ice age, unless they did something. Clearly they had to do this without and despite humans. The Chimpanzees, Gorillas were too embarrassed to speak. The recent actions of the humans had brought the monkeys to shame, even though they had nothing to do with it. There just was a stigma because of the faint resemblance.
The Elephants wanted to trample down the mountains so that the Sun would have nowhere left to hide. The eagles wanted to go fly to the Sun and convince it to rise again.
Now you might be wondering how the animals were even managing all this without light. The answer is simple, many animals have night vision, so they don’t actually need Sunlight to see each other. You might worry that this is a completely useless trait to have accidentally evolved in animals. If so, relax. This is just a work of fiction. Maybe you shouldn’t take these stories too seriously.
Anyway, ultimately it was decided that someone would persuade the Sun to rise again. They decided to send only one animal. The Sun was undoubtedly an emotional wreck at the moment. And it wouldn’t do to gang up on him. So they sent the cutest, fluffiest of them all – the rabbit.
The rabbit went and pleaded with the Sun, but the Sun did not come out from behind the mountain. The rabbit pleaded and pleaded but the Sun did not even acknowledge the rabbit. It might be enough to drive anyone hopping mad. But the rabbit was only dejected. He returned back to the United Animals General Assembly.
The Lion laughed at the rabbit. “You’re not really very smart are you? You rabbits may have tricked us lions before(Episode 4), but what’s the use of that when you don’t know how to handle a simple situation like this? I’ll go myself and show you”
The Lion was convinced that what the Sun needed was a good scare. All he had to do was roar loudly and the Sun would be frightened out from behind those mountains.
But that didn’t work. The Lion roared and roared until his throat was sore. Finally he had to admit defeat. He lost his pride. Not just the emotion, but he lost his pride – as in family. They didn’t want to stay with a failure!
The Elephant was convinced that he could wrap his trunk around the Sun and physically force him out. But that didn’t go well either. The Sun was a little too hot and the Elephant’s trunk was sensitive. So yeah, the Elephant felt that getting the Sun out was like pulling teeth. Maybe worse, he’d have prefered to pull teeth.
The peacock went next and tried to entice the Sun out by dancing a lovely dance. The rain, the clouds, lightning, thunder all came to watch. But no Sun.
Ah let’s just give up and resign ourselves to a life of misery, concluded the General Secretary of the United Animals General Assembly.
“Wait, I must be allowed to try,” said a voice. It was a Rooster. Everyone laughed at the Rooster. No one expected a rooster to succeed when so many of the other animals had failed.
“Well it’s going to take us a while to pack up here and go home to our families. You can try all you want. But don’t expect any support from us. I declare this General Assembly session concluded”
That was fine by the Rooster. He stepped out of the building and cleared his threat. In a loud and shrill voice he crowed “Cock a doodle doo!”
Something happened! It had gotten a little more bright as the Sun was finally beginning to emerge from behind the mountain.
The Rooster repeated its cry. And again there was a bit more of the Sun that came up. The Rooster belted out every cry it could and soon, the Sun was high in the sky!
That is how the world’s very first excessive heat as well as excessive cold problems were solved.
Naturally, this is why the Sun rises everyday. The Rooster implores it to rise again. Those 7 council members are no longer a threat. That doesn’t quite explain why the Sun has to retire every night, but well you can’t have everything explained neatly in every story now, can you?
Our second story features another astronomical and environmental cast.
It starts with Venus, the Brightest object in the Sky besides the Sun and the Moon. Now Venus is called the morning/evening star but we all know now that it is in reality a planet. But in this story, it was not just a star but also much more. Venus was the mother of the Sun, the Moon and the Wind. Seeing the importance of the role that her children were playing in sustaining all life on Earth, she must have been proud of the way she raised her children.
But as we’ll find there are limits to that.
The thing started when the Sun, the Moon and the Wind went off to their Uncle and Aunt’s home for dinner. In keeping with the nature of the family, the Aunt and Uncle were Thunder and Lightning.
Auntie Thunder and Uncle Lightning had made delicious food for their niece and nephews. You might wonder what kind of dishes these were. But not to worry. These were regular dishes that humans might eat as well. So that included various types of fishes, vegetables, pulao and lots of desserts of course.
The kids had an excellent time. At the end of the meal, they thanked Auntie Thunder and Uncle Lightning and went back home to Venus, their mother.
Venus naturally wanted to know all about how their evening had gone. The kids very animatedly described all of the amazing dishes they had tasted. However, the excitement levels suddenly dropped when Venus asked – “what did you get for me?”
The Sun admitted that he hadn’t gotten anything. Why should he? He was just having a good time, the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.
The Wind said he hadn’t brought back anything for Venus either. He was too polite to bring up with Auntie Thunder and Uncle lightning the possibility of getting something packed for Venus.
The Moon had a different answer. Of course she had been too polite as well. But she had done something about it. She hadn’t asked Auntie Thunder and Uncle Lightning, but she had scraped some of the dishes under her beautiful long fingernails. She scraped out and deposited the food from her fingernails onto a plate and offered it to Venus.
The Sun and Wind obviously appeared revolted at the unsanitary way in which the Moon had brought back food. But Venus had a different take on it.
Venus cursed the Sun. From that day on, his rays would burn people and make them very hot and uncomfortable. Which is really punishing people, not punishing the Sun.
Same thing with the Wind – she cursed him so that he would not be welcomed by folks on warm days. I don’t quite follow the logic here, because I have often found a breeze to be a gentle relief during a warm summer day. But I suppose the Wind didn’t represent cool breezes, only warm ones.
Venus was pleased with the Moon! She appreciated the thought behind her daughter’s actions and blessed her for it. From that day on, the Moon’s rays would be cool, calm and bring peace to anyone looking up at the Moon. They would also not bring excess heat to anyone.
While she was blessing her daughter, the Sun nudged the Wind by the elbow and asked “There is no Moonlight. All moonlight is really just reflected Sunlight. Who’s going to tell her? You or me?”
Well of course no one did. But there you have it. Now you know why the Sun is warm, the Moon is not so warm, and why the Wind doesn’t really help as much if it’s already warm.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
The council members were brothers in the original story. And the Suns were brothers as well. But why Seven? Seven is a special number not just in Indian mythology and folklore but in cultures around the world. There are the Saptarishi – the seven wise men. Seven voyages of Sinbad. Seven dwarves.
Also, I don’t know if you have seen Sun Dogs, but they are a natural phenomenon that might give an unsuspecting person the impression that there’s more than one Sun in the sky. They are not a very common occurrence though. Certainly not an explanation of what the tribe experienced. But I thought I’d mention it. Here are some links to what Sun Dogs look like:
Sun Dogs in Alaska
Sun Dog in Germany
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll do something special. One of you listeners wanted to hear the differences between various roles – rishi, muni, sanyasi, brahmacharya. So we’ll explore that via the story of Adi Shankara. There’s also a tie-in with Yoga. And that’s pretty relevant given that International Yoga day is right around the corner.