Trita in the Well

It was night, and a man was at the bottom of a well.

The Rigveda does not say how he came to be there. It does not describe the well. It gives us nineteen verses in his voice, and almost every one of them ends with the same cry.

He looked up. Far above him was a small round piece of sky, and the moon was crossing it. He looked down, and the moon was there too, running in the water at his feet.

"The moon runs in the waters," he said, "and the bird with fine wings runs in heaven. Lightning, with your golden wheels, nobody can find where you live. Heaven and Earth, know what has happened to me!"

Nobody answered. He thought of the world going on above him without him. People were getting what they wished for. Husbands and wives had each other.

"I am the man who sang so many hymns when the Soma flowed," he said. "And now my troubles eat me the way a wolf falls on a thirsty deer. Heaven and Earth, know what has happened to me!"

The walls of the well pressed close. They hurt his sides.

"My ribs hurt me on every side, like rival wives crowding round," he said. "My cares gnaw at me as mice gnaw a weaver's threads. Heaven and Earth, know what has happened to me!"

Then he began to ask questions, and they were hard ones.

"I ask Agni, who carries the messages of the sacrifice. Where has the old law gone? Who holds it now?"

"You gods who sit in the three bright worlds, what do you call true, and what do you call false? Where is my old claim on you? Where is the watchful eye of Varuna?"

He was not giving up the gods. He was reminding them that he was theirs.

"Up there where the seven rays shine, there my family begins. Trita Aptya knows it, and he speaks up for his kin."

He kept his eyes on the sky. He spoke of five bulls that stand high in the middle of heaven, and he asked them to carry his praise to the gods and come back. He thought of bright birds that sit on the height of heaven and drive back the wolf when it tries to cross the waters.

And at the bottom of the well he made something new.

"This hymn is freshly made, and it is sound," he said. "It is fit to be spoken aloud, O gods. The flowing of the rivers is the law. The spreading light of the sun is the truth. Heaven and Earth, know what has happened to me!"

Near the end the hymn steps back and tells us, in one verse, who the man is and how it ended.

Trita, sunk in the well, called on the gods for help. Brihaspati heard that call, and he made a wide way out of the narrow place.

That is all. We are not told how Brihaspati did it. But the voice has one last thing to say, and it is about a road and a wolf.

"A red wolf saw me once as I went along my path," he says. "He looked at me, and then he arched up and slunk away, like a carpenter with a pain in his back."

It is the voice of a man who is walking again.

A Brahmana of the Samaveda tells how Trita came to be in the well, and it names two brothers.

There were three of them, called the Aptyas: Ekata, Dvita and Trita. Their names mean the First, the Second and the Third. They were driving home a herd of cattle they had won, and in the forest thirst came over them. They ran here and there looking for water, and they found a well.

Somebody had to climb down.

"Not I," said Ekata.

"Nor I," said Dvita.

So Trita went down. He drew water and passed it up, and his brothers drank until they were satisfied.

Then they looked at the cattle and at each other. They rolled a chariot wheel over the mouth of the well, with Trita still inside, and they drove the whole herd away.

Trita stood in the dark under the wheel.

"May I get out of here," he said. "May I find a way. May I find help."

Then he saw a chant, a saman. He sang it in praise, and he ended it with the words "with drops."

Parjanya, the rain, answered. A great shower fell. The well filled, and the water lifted Trita up and up until it floated him to the very wheel that shut him in, and he was out.

He followed the tracks of the cattle. His brothers saw him coming along behind them, and they ran into the forest. One of them became a bear and the other became an ape. The Brahmana says that it was Trita who made them so.

The cattle were his alone after that. The chant he saw in the well is called the Traita saman, the chant of Trita. The Brahmana ends with advice: whoever needs help, or a way out, should sing it, and the rain will come for him too.

In the Mahabharata, Krishna's brother Balarama goes on pilgrimage along the Sarasvati and comes to a holy place called Udapana, the Well. This is the story told of it.

A sage named Gautama had three sons, Ekata, Dvita and Trita. After he died, the kings he had served honoured his sons, and they honoured Trita most, for he was the most learned. His brothers wanted wealth for a great sacrifice. The three went from patron to patron and were given a large herd, and they started home with it. Trita walked in front. Ekata and Dvita came behind, driving the animals.

"Trita knows the Veda and can earn more cattle whenever he likes," they said to each other. "Let us take these and go our own way."

Night fell. A wolf appeared on the road. Trita ran from it in fear and fell into a deep dry pit on the bank of the Sarasvati. He cried out, and his brothers heard him. They were afraid of the wolf, and they wanted the herd. They walked on.

Trita sat among dust and creepers. What he feared most was dying without having drunk Soma. So he held the sacrifice in his mind. A creeper that hung into the pit became his Soma plant. He thought water into the dry well, and fire. He spoke every verse in his head and gave each god a share.

The sound reached heaven. Brihaspati heard it first.

"Trita is sacrificing," he told the gods. "We must go."

They came and stood at the edge.

"We have come for our shares," they said.

"Look at me," said Trita, "fallen into this terrible well."

He gave them their shares, and they offered him a boon. He asked to be saved, and he asked that whoever bathes in that well should gain what the drinkers of Soma gain. At once the Sarasvati rose in the pit in waves and lifted him out.

Trita went home and cursed his brothers to become wolves, and their children leopards, bears and apes.