Soma is kept in the highest heaven; a falcon carries it down to men while the archer Krishanu shoots at him. Later texts make the bird the Gayatri metre, then Garuda.
Soma is confined in heaven behind a hundred iron forts. A voice says it flew out as a falcon and that the bird carried it off by strength, not by Soma's wish. The falcon, swiftest of birds and without a car, takes the stalk from the loftiest heaven and speeds down. Krishanu the archer shoots; a single feather falls. The bird brings Soma to Manu, with a thousand and ten thousand libations, and the cup of milk-mixed juice is handed to Indra. RV 9.77.2 recalls the trembling before bow-armed Krishanu; RV 1.93.6 pairs the falcon with Matarishvan, who brought fire.
Kadru and Suparni wager their own selves on who sees farther (a white horse at a post beyond the ocean; Kadru sees its tail tossed by the wind) and Suparni loses. Kadru demands Soma from the third heaven as ransom. Suparni's children, the metres, each of four syllables, fly up as birds. Jagati tires and drops three syllables, Trishtubh drops one; each brings back parts of the rite. Gayatri, sent off with a chant for safe passage, frightens the guards, tears away two sharp golden cups that snap shut around Soma, grasps Soma with feet and beak and collects the dropped syllables. Krishanu's arrow cuts a nail from her left foot, which becomes the porcupine. The gods rule the found syllables hers, so the Gayatri has eight.
What is different here:
The bird is a metre of poetry and female; a wager between Kadru and Suparni is the cause; the story explains the three pressings and syllable counts. The Taittiriya adds that the Gandharva Vishvavasu stole the Soma on the way and the gods bought it back with Speech (owned by the saraswati-vac agent). In the Aitareya the metres start with four syllables each; in the Taittiriya Jagati has fourteen and Trishtubh thirteen.
Mahabharata, Adi Parva 16-34 (Garuda and the amrita)
Pan-IndiaAll traditions
Kadru, mother of a thousand snakes, and Vinata, both wives of Kashyapa, bet on the colour of the horse Uchchaihshravas' tail; Kadru's sons hang in it as black hairs and Vinata becomes her slave. Vinata's son Garuda hatches blazing like fire, learns the price of freedom is the amrita, defeats the guarding gods, quenches a ring of fire with river water, slips through a razor-edged wheel, blinds two guardian snakes with dust and takes the nectar without tasting it. Vishnu grants him boons and takes him as mount. Indra's thunderbolt costs him one feather, dropped by choice. He sets the nectar on kusha grass, Vinata is freed, Indra carries it off, and the snakes lick the grass and split their tongues.
What is different here:
The falcon is Garuda with a mother, a motive and a name; the prize is called both Soma and amrita; the archer is replaced by Indra's thunderbolt and the feather falls by Garuda's choice; the nectar is returned to the gods; adds Vishnu, the kusha grass and the snakes' forked tongues.
Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; Rigveda Brahmanas: the Aitareya and Kausitaki Brahmanas, tr. A. B. Keith (1920); The Veda of the Black Yajus School (Taittiriya Sanhita), tr. A. B. Keith (1914); The Satapatha-Brahmana, tr. Julius Eggeling (Sacred Books of the East 12, 41); The Mahabharata, tr. K. M. Ganguli (1883-96), sections read for the Vedic layer