The Falcon and the Archer

Before there was Soma on earth, there was Soma in heaven, and nobody could reach it.

It was kept in the highest place of all, above the winds. The Rigveda says it lay shut inside a hundred fortresses of iron. Gods and men both wanted it, because Soma was the drink that made a singer see clearly and made Indra strong enough for his battles. But it was far away and it was guarded.

One of its guards was an archer named Krishanu. The hymns tell us almost nothing about him except that he had a bow and a quick temper, and that he was watching.

The Rigveda gives this story in two short hymns, and the second one begins with a voice speaking from inside the walls.

"While I still lay in the womb," the voice says, "I knew all the generations of the gods. A hundred iron fortresses held me in. Then out I flew, swift, a falcon."

Who is speaking? The hymn does not say, and readers have never agreed. It may be the falcon remembering how he broke out. It may be Soma himself, telling how he was carried. The next verse sounds like Soma.

"He did not carry me off because I wished it," the voice goes on. "He won me by his strength and his courage."

So a falcon came. The poets call him the swiftest of all birds, and they make a point of saying that he had no chariot to carry him. He had only his wings. He flew up the wide path, quick as thought, to the top of heaven. He seized the Soma stalk in his claws and held it tight.

Then he turned and dived.

He came down with a loud cry, the hymn says, rushing like the wind. He left the hostile powers behind him. He passed the winds themselves and grew stronger as he flew.

Krishanu saw him go.

"Then the archer, raging in his mind, aimed and let the bowstring loose."

That one line is the whole fight. The arrow flew after the falcon as he dropped from the summit of heaven. Another hymn, in the ninth book, remembers the fear of that moment. Its poet sings of one who trembled, terrified in his heart before the archer with the bow, and still held on to the sweet thing he carried.

The arrow did not bring the falcon down. It came close enough to cut.

"Then, downward, a feather fell from the bird as he hurried on his way."

A single wing feather, drifting down between heaven and earth. That is all Krishanu won.

The falcon did not keep what he had taken. He flew on to the world of men and brought the Soma to Manu, the first man to offer sacrifice. The hymn calls it the offering the gods love. It says he brought a thousand pressings with him, ten thousand, as if every cup of Soma that would ever be poured on earth was already in his claws.

And the hymn ends where every Soma story ends, at the pressing ground. The stalk has been crushed and strained. The juice stands in a bright cup, mixed with milk.

"Now let the generous Indra take the cup," says the poet. "Let the hero drink it and be glad."

The poets never forgot the bird. In another hymn they set him beside the being who first carried fire down to men. One of the two, they say, was brought from heaven by Matarishvan, and the falcon tore the other from the mountain. Fire and Soma, the two things the sacrifice cannot do without, both had to be fetched from far away.

The priests who came after the hymns told the story again, and their bird was made of words.

It began with a wager between two sisters, Kadru and Suparni. They agreed that the one who could see farther would own the other.

"On the far shore of the ocean a white horse stands at a post," said Suparni. "Do you see it?"

"I do," said Kadru. "And its tail was hanging down a moment ago. Now the wind is tossing it."

Suparni flew to look. It was just as Kadru had said, and Suparni had lost herself.

"Soma is in the third heaven," said Kadru. "Fetch it, and buy yourself free."

Suparni's children were the metres of poetry. In those days each of them had only four syllables. "This is what parents raise children for," she told them.

Jagati flew up first. She tired halfway, dropped three of her syllables, and came back without Soma. Trishtubh flew next. She went a little farther, dropped one syllable, and came back as well.

Then the gods turned to Gayatri, the smallest.

"I will go," she said, "if you chant me safely there and safely back."

They chanted, and she flew. The Soma lay between two golden cups with sharp edges that snapped shut at every blink of an eye. Gayatri frightened the guards and tore the cups away. She gripped Soma in both feet and in her beak, and on the way she gathered up the syllables her sisters had dropped.

Krishanu shot at her. The arrow sliced a nail from her left foot, and the nail, they say, became the porcupine.

She came home with Soma and with eight syllables. Her sisters wanted theirs back.

"They are ours as we found them," said Gayatri, and the gods agreed with her. That is why the Gayatri has eight syllables to a line, and why it is sung first at the pressing.

In the Mahabharata the sisters are Kadru and Vinata, wives of the sage Kashyapa. Kadru is the mother of a thousand snakes. Vinata has two eggs.

Their wager was about the tail of the divine horse Uchchaihshravas. Vinata said it was white. Kadru said it was black, and she ordered her sons to hang in the tail like dark hairs. When the sisters crossed the ocean to look, the tail showed black. Vinata became her sister's slave.

Then her second egg broke, and Garuda came out blazing so brightly that the gods took him for fire. He found his mother carrying Kadru on her shoulders, and he himself was made to carry the snakes.

"Why must I do what the snakes tell me?" he asked.

"I lost a wager by a trick," said Vinata, "and I am a slave."

Garuda went to the snakes. "Tell me what will buy our freedom."

"Bring us the amrita," said the snakes.

So he flew to heaven. He scattered the gods who stood guard. A wall of fire ringed the nectar, and he drank up rivers to put it out. Beyond the fire a wheel with razor edges turned without rest. He made himself tiny and slipped between its spokes. Two snakes watched there, whose glance could burn. He threw dust in their eyes. Then he lifted the nectar and flew, and he did not drink a drop of it.

Vishnu met him in the sky and was pleased with him, and Garuda agreed to be his mount. Indra struck him with the thunderbolt. Garuda laughed and let one feather fall, out of respect for the weapon.

"Let us be friends," said Indra. "But do not give the Soma to the snakes."

"I will only set it down," said Garuda. "Then take it."

He laid the nectar on kusha grass. Vinata was free. While the snakes bathed, Indra carried it away, and the snakes licked the grass until their tongues split in two.