The Cup the Healers Won

The sage Chyavana had told the Ashvins what they lacked. The gods were holding a great sacrifice in Kurukshetra, he said, and the two of them had been left out of it.

The twins went there at once.

They arrived when the morning's first chant, the one sung outside the shed, was just over. The gods were seated at their work. Nobody had kept a place for the newcomers.

"Invite us to this," said the Ashvins.

"We will not invite you," said the gods. "You have wandered about among men. You have mixed with them far too much, curing their sicknesses."

That was the whole charge against them. They were healers. They touched the sick and the wounded, and they spent more time on earth than in heaven.

The Ashvins did not argue about it. They looked at the sacrifice instead, the way a doctor looks at a patient.

"You are worshipping with a headless sacrifice," they said.

The gods were taken aback. "Headless? How is it headless?"

"Invite us, and we will tell you."

The gods looked at one another. They had been toiling at this rite for a long time, and it had not been going well.

"So be it," they said.

So a cup of Soma was drawn for the Ashvins, the first they had ever been given. The two of them became working priests of the sacrifice, the ones who do the handling and the pouring. And they did what they had come to do. They put the head of the sacrifice back in its place, and the rite was whole.

Then the twins asked for one thing more.

"We are the working priests, and so we are the heads of this sacrifice. Our cup comes too late in the order. Move it forward, and put it with the cups that belong to pairs of gods."

The gods agreed to that as well. This is why, the Brahmana says, the cup for the Ashvins is drawn tenth in the Soma sacrifice and yet offered third, and why it is drawn only after the outdoor chant has been sung. That was the moment they arrived.

The Taittiriya school of the same Veda tells it a little differently. There the gods are the ones who ask.

"The head of the sacrifice has been cut off," they say to the twins. "You are physicians. Put it back."

"Then let us choose a gift," the Ashvins answer. "Let a cup be drawn here for us too."

The gods want the cure, but they hesitate over the healers. "These two are not clean," they say. "They go about among men." So they first purify the Ashvins with the outdoor chant, and only then draw the cup.

After that, this text says, the Ashvins set down their healing skill in three places. A third of it went into fire, a third into the waters and a third into the priest. That is why a healer should keep a pot of water at his side and a priest at his right hand when he treats the sick.

The cup itself is still shaped for them. It has a lip, like a mouth, because the two who drink from it once gave the sacrifice back its head.

In the Mahabharata the Ashvins do not ask for the cup themselves. A grateful man does it for them.

The sage Chyavana, newly young, had promised the twins that they would drink Soma in front of Indra. Soon afterwards his father-in-law, King Sharyati, held a sacrifice, and Chyavana served as the priest. When the moment came he lifted a measure of Soma for the Ashvins.

Indra stopped him.

"These two have no right to it. They are the physicians of the gods. That trade shuts them out."

"They are great souls," said Chyavana, "and they have made me young for ever. Why should you and the others have the Soma, and not they? Know that the Ashvins are gods too."

"They practise healing, so they are servants," said Indra. "They take any shape they please and roam about the world of mortals. How can they claim Soma?"

He said it again and again. Chyavana paid no attention and took up the cup.

"If you offer that," said Indra, "I will throw my thunderbolt at you."

Chyavana glanced at him, smiled, and went on with the offering. Indra raised the thunderbolt. His arm stopped in the air and would not come down. The sage had frozen it.

Then Chyavana poured an offering into the fire with a spell, and something rose out of it. It was a demon named Mada, a name that means drunkenness. One of his jaws rested on the earth and the other reached the sky. His four fangs were each a hundred leagues long, and his tongue flickered like lightning. He rushed at Indra with his mouth open.

Indra could not move his arms. He licked his dry lips.

"Son of Bhrigu, be merciful," he said. "From this day the two Ashvins shall have the Soma. What you have begun cannot be undone. I only did this so that your power would be known."

Chyavana let him go. But Mada could not simply be put away. The sage broke him into pieces and placed them in drink, in gambling, in hunting and in desire, and that is where drunkenness lives now.

The Ashvins had their cup.