The Voice in the Wood

Speech went away from the gods.

The Taittiriya Samhita gives her reason in a few words. She was not willing to serve for the sacrifice any longer. The gods had used her for every prayer, every call and every answer, and she had had enough of it. She went away without telling anyone.

The gods could not do without her, and they went looking.

They found her in the Waters. She had slipped into the rivers and pools and was hiding in them.

"Give her back," the gods said to the Waters.

The Waters were in no hurry.

"If we give her back," they said, "what will be our share?"

"Whatever you wish," said the gods.

The Waters considered. They knew very well what troubled them most.

"People throw unclean things into us," they said. "Grant us this. Whatever foul thing a man throws into us, let us not be mixed with it. Let us stay clean."

"Granted," said the gods.

That is why, the Brahmana says, water is pure and clean.

So the Waters gave Speech up.

She did not go home. As soon as the Waters let go of her she ran on past the gods, and this time she went into the Trees.

The gods came to the edge of the forest.

"Give her back," they said to the Trees.

The Trees were not like the Waters. They did not bargain. They stood there with Speech inside them, in every trunk and branch, and they said no.

The gods asked again. The Trees would not give her up.

Then the gods grew angry, and they cursed the Trees.

"With your own handle for a thunderbolt, men shall cut you down."

And so it is. An axe has an iron head, but its handle is wood. Every tree that falls is felled with the help of a piece of a tree. The Brahmana says the Trees brought that upon themselves on the day they kept Speech from the gods.

They kept her all the same. They could not hold her whole, so they shared her out among themselves. They put her into four things that are made of wood: the drum, the lute, the axle of the cart, and the reed pipe.

Think of the boom of a drum, and of a lute string over its wooden belly. Think of a flute, and of the long creak of a cart wheel turning on its axle. None of these has a tongue. Yet each has a voice, and it is a loud and lovely one.

"That is because it was the voice of the gods," says the Brahmana.

The priests did not forget where she had gone. At the great sacrifice they beat drums at the corners of the altar ground, and they pass the Soma vessel under the axle of the cart. They do it, the text says, to win back the voice that is in the trees. And the man who is consecrated for the sacrifice is given a wooden staff, cut to reach as high as his mouth. With that staff, says the Taittiriya, he wins Speech.

The Shatapatha Brahmana remembers another day when Speech walked out. On that day she had been insulted.

Two families of divine beings, the Adityas and the Angirases, each wanted the other to serve as priests at its sacrifice. The Adityas were quicker. They held their rite first, and the Angirases had to serve them.

When a sacrifice is over the priests must be paid. The Adityas brought out the fee, and the fee was Vac herself.

The Angirases looked at her and shook their heads.

"We shall be the losers if we take her," they said. They would not accept her.

So the Adityas took her away and brought another fee. They brought Surya, the sun. The Angirases took him at once.

Vac had been led out before everyone as a gift and had been turned down, and now she watched the sun being welcomed in her place.

"How is he better than I am?" she said. "Why did they take him and not me?"

She left them all. She became a lioness, and she went to the open ground that lay between the gods and their enemies, the Asuras. There she prowled up and down, seizing whatever came near her.

Both sides wanted her, and both called to her. The gods sent Agni as their messenger. The Asuras sent one of their own.

She was more willing to go to the gods. But she had learned to ask first.

"What will be mine if I come over to you?"

"The offering shall reach you even before it reaches Agni," said the gods.

"Then whatever blessing you ask through me shall come true for you," she said.

She went over to the gods. That is why butter is poured on the high altar before the fire is laid on it. The high altar is Vac, the Brahmana says, and she is fed first.