The Wind and the Serpent

In the age called Dvapara, Vayu the Wind went up to Vaikuntha to bow before Vishnu.

He did not get past the door. Adishesha, the great serpent on whom Vishnu rests, was keeping guard there.

"You cannot go in," said the serpent. "The Lord is resting, and Lakshmi is with him."

"I have come to pay my respects," said Vayu. "Nobody stops the Wind."

"I am stopping you."

Vayu was furious. Words became blows, and the two of them were fighting at the threshold when Vishnu himself came out to see what the noise was. He found them shouting.

"There is no one stronger than I am," said Vayu. "I move the three worlds."

"I carry the three worlds," said Adishesha. "And I carry you, Lord, as well."

Vishnu did not take a side. He proposed a test instead.

"North of Meru there is a hill called Ananda, a spur of the great mountain. Let Shesha wrap himself around it and hold it. Let Vayu blow, and move it if he can. Then we shall know."

Adishesha wound his long body round and round the hill and spread his hoods over the top of it. Vayu drew himself together and blew.

The hill did not move. Vayu blew harder. The coils tightened. The contest went on, and the longer it went on the worse things grew for everybody else. The worlds shook. Brahma, Indra and the other gods could bear it no longer, and it was to the serpent that they went.

"Adishesha," they said, "give him the victory. Do it for the sake of the world. Neither of you will stop otherwise, and there will be nothing left."

Adishesha listened to them. He loosened his hold.

At that instant the Wind struck, and the hill came away from Meru with the serpent still wrapped around it. Hill and serpent together were blown far to the south and came down beside the river Swarnamukhi.

There the serpent lay, and he was miserable. He had let go for the good of the world, and all the same he had been flung across the sky like a dry leaf.

Brahma and the gods came to him where he had fallen.

"Do not grieve," they said. "You will become one with this hill, and Vishnu himself will come to live upon you."

So Adishesha stretched himself out and turned to stone. The long range that runs through that country is his body, and people call it Seshachalam, the hill of Shesha. His hood is Venkatadri at Tirumala, where Vishnu stands as Venkateswara. His middle, they say, is Ahobilam, where Narasimha is worshipped, and his tail is Srisailam, the hill of Shiva.

Some in Tirumala tell the middle of the story differently. In their telling Vayu, unable to shift the serpent, drew all the air of the earth into one great push, and every creature was left gasping. It was the sage Narada who went to Adishesha then. "Everyone knows who is strong," he said. "But if you do not let the mountain shake, every living thing will die." And the serpent, thinking that his Lord would not be pleased with him, eased his grip.

In the Tamil country the same contest is told at the temples of Shiva, and there the mountain breaks into pieces.

At Tiruchengode they say it was the sages who set the terms.

"Let Adishesha cling to Meru," they said, "and let Vayu free the mountain from him if he has the power."

The serpent wrapped himself round the peak and pressed his hoods down upon it. Vayu blew, and blew again, and could not move him. Adishesha had won.

Then Vayu, in his anger, did the one thing nobody could answer. He stopped. He held back all the air in the world, and every living being fell down in a faint.

The sages hurried to him.

"Let the air go," they begged. "The contest is not worth the life of the world."

Vayu let it go, all of it at once. The sudden blast tore the top off the mountain, and the serpent's head went with it. The pieces fell to earth in three places, wet with flesh and blood. One of them is the hill of Tiruchengode. Its rock is red, and the name of the town means the red hill. People also call it Nagamalai, the snake hill, and a serpent sixty feet long is carved into its side. At the top Shiva is worshipped as Ardhanarishvara, half himself and half the Goddess.

Other temples count more pieces. In their telling Adishesha coiled around Kailasa, Shiva's own mountain, and Vayu raised a whirlwind against him. Eight peaks broke away and came down in eight places. Three of them are named in every list: Trincomalee on the coast of Sri Lanka, the rock of Tiruchirappalli, and Srikalahasti beside the Swarnamukhi. Each of these calls itself the Kailasa of the south.

At Srikalahasti the Wind did not only throw a mountain. They say Vayu did penance there for thousands of years before a linga of white camphor, until Shiva appeared and granted him three wishes. Vayu asked to be present everywhere in the world, to live as breath in every creature, and to have the linga carry his name. It is still called the Vayu Linga, the linga of air.

A third telling explains where the island fortress of Lanka came from. Vettam Mani's Puranic Encyclopaedia records it, and in it the serpent is not Shesha but Vasuki, the king of the snakes.

Vayu and Vasuki had fallen out, and each was determined to show himself the stronger.

Vasuki went to Mahameru and wound himself around it. He lay coil upon coil, so close that not a breath of air could get between his body and the rock.

"Come in if you can," he said.

Vayu could not. He raged around the mountain as a cyclone, and the whole world shook with it. Meru itself began to tremble. Vasuki did not stir.

The storm grew, and the gods grew frightened. They went to Brahma and to Shiva, and all of them together went to Vishnu and told him what was happening.

Vishnu sent for the two of them.

"This quarrel ends now," he said. "Both of you, stop."

Neither could refuse him. Vasuki began to unwind. The first coil he loosened had been lying across a spur of Meru with three summits, the one called Trikuta, the three-peaked.

The Wind saw the gap and was into it at once. Before the serpent could close it again, Vayu had broken Trikuta away from the mountain. He carried it off through the sky and dropped it into the southern sea, beyond the last point of the land of Bharata.

The three peaks stood up out of the water. In time Vishvakarma, the builder of the gods, raised a city on them. That city was Lanka, which became the stronghold of Ravana.