Still raging though the battle was, its outcome was clear from the start. The gods knew they were going to lose. They hurried to get away. But what infuriated them most were the whirlwinds of dust unleashed in the heavens by every flap of Garuḍa’s wings. Dust in the heavens… It was the ultimate humiliation… Even the guardians of the soma were overcome. In vain they loosed their arrows. Just one of Garuḍa’s feathers spun majestic in the sky, severed by an arrow from Kṛśānu, the footless archer. Garuḍa took no notice of his enemies. The trial still before him was far harder. On the summit of the heavens he found a metal wheel, its sharp spokes spinning without cease. Behind the wheel he could just see a glow: a gold cup, or rather two cups, one turned upside down upon the other, their rims jagged and sharp. And these cups likewise were moving. They opened and closed in a rocking motion. When they closed, their rims fit perfectly together. Between the wheel and the cups hissed two Snakes. Garuḍa tossed dust in the Snakes’ eyes and concentrated. He must slip between the wheel’s blades, he would have to get his beak between the rims of the two cups, he would have to snatch the glow he had glimpsed within. Then escape. But everything had to happen in no more than the blinking of an eye. On that tiny fraction of time depended the fate of his mother, indeed of the world. Garuḍa did it. It didn’t occur to him to drink the soma that dripped from his beak as he headed back to earth. He was thinking of the Snakes, and of his mother.
Indra tried to stop Garuḍa as he flew toward the earth. He found an accommodating and contrite expression. “There’s no point in our being enemies,” said Indra. “We are too powerful to be enemies,” he added. Then he started to cajole: “Ask me anything you want. I have something I want to ask you: don’t let the Snakes get hold of the soma.” “But I have to ransom my mother,” said the obstinate Garuḍa. “To ransom your mother all you have to do is deliver the soma to the Snakes. You don’t have to do any more than that. But I don’t want the Snakes to possess the soma. I’ll tell you what to do…” “If that’s how things stand…” said Garuḍa. He was intimidated by Indra’s self-confidence, and his reasonableness too. “After all,” thought Garuḍa, “this is the king of the gods talking.”
“And now tell me what you want… ” said Indra. He was growing insistent. “That the Snakes be my food, forever and ever,” said Garuḍa. Whatever it took, he didn’t want to risk swallowing a brahman again. And then he liked eating the Snakes. But now he fell silent a moment, out of shyness. He was about to announce his deepest desire, something he had never uttered before: “I would like to study the Vedas.” “So be it,” said Indra.
The Snakes had arranged themselves in a circle to await Garuḍa’s return. They saw him coming like a black star, a point expanding on the horizon, until his beak laid down a delicate plant, damp with sap, upon the darbha grass. “This is the soma, Snakes. This is my mother’s ransom. I deliver it to you. But before you drink of this celestial liquid, I would advise a purificatory bath.” In disciplined devotion, the Snakes slithered off toward the river. For a moment, the only moment of tranquillity the earth would ever know, the soma was left, alone, on the grass. A second later Indra’s rapacious hand had swooped from the heavens, and already it was gone. Gleaming with water, aware of the gravity of the moment, the Snakes could be seen returning through the tall grass. They found nothing but a place where the grass had been bent slightly. Hurriedly they licked at the darbha grass where Garuḍa had laid the soma. From that moment on the Snakes have had forked tongues.
Garuḍa said: “Mother, I’ve paid your ransom. You’re free now. Climb on my back.” They wandered over forests and plains, over the ocean, leisurely and blithe. Every now and then Garuḍa would fly down to earth to snatch bunches of Snakes in his beak. On his back, Vinatā bubbled with pleasure. Then Garuḍa took leave of his mother. He said his time had come. Once again he flew to the tree Rauhiṇa. He hid among the tree’s branches to study the Vedas.
Buried deep among the tree Rauhiṇa’s branches, Garuḍa read the Vedas. It was years before he raised his beak. Those beings he had terrorized in the heavens, who had scattered like dust at his arrival, who had tried in vain to fight him, he knew who they were now: with reverence he scanned their names and those of their descendants. The Ādityas, the Vasus, the Rudras, Varuṇa, Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Tvaṣṭṛ, Pūṣan, Vivasvat, Savitṛ, Indra, Viṣṇu, Dhātṛ, Aṃśa, Anumati, Dhiṣaṇā, Soma, Bṛhaspati, Guńgū, Sūrya, Svasti, Uṣas, Āyu, Sarasvatī. And others too. Thirty-three in all. But each had many names — and some gods could be replaced by others. The names whirled in silence. Perfectly motionless. Garuḍa experienced a sense of vertigo and intoxication. The hymns blazed within him. Finally he reached the tenth book of the Ṛg Veda. And here he smelled a shift in the wind. Along with the names came a shadow now, a name never uttered. What had been affirmative tended to the interrogative. The voice that spoke was more remote. It no longer celebrated. It said what is. Now Garuḍa was reading hymn one hundred and twenty-one in triṣṭubh meter. There were nine stanzas, each one ending with the same question: “Who (Ka) is the god to whom we should offer our sacrifice?” Estuary to a hidden ocean, that syllable (ka) would go on echoing within him as the essence of the Vedas. Garuḍa stopped and shut his eyes. He had never felt so uncertain, and so close to understanding. Never felt so light, in that sudden absence of names. When he opened his eyes, he realized that the nine stanzas were followed by another, this one separated by a space that was slightly larger. The writing was a little more uneven, minute. A tenth stanza, without any question. And here there was a name, the only name in the hymn, the only answer. Garuḍa couldn’t remember ever having seen that name before: Prajāpati.
II
Prajāpati was alone. He didn’t even know whether he existed or not. “So to speak,” iva. (As soon as one touches on something crucial, it’s as well to qualify what one has said with the particle iva, which doesn’t tie us down.) There was only the mind, manas. And what is peculiar about the mind is that it doesn’t know whether it exists or not. But it comes before everything else. “There is nothing before the mind.” Then, even prior to establishing whether it existed or not, the mind desired. It was continuous, diffuse, undefined. Yet, as though drawn to something exotic, something belonging to another species of life, it desired what was definite and separate, what had shape. A Self, ātman—that was the name it used. And the mind imagined that Self as having consistency. Thinking, the mind grew red hot. It saw thirty-six thousand fires flare up, made of mind, made with mind. Suspended above the fires were thirty-six thousand cups, and these too were made of mind.