Garuḍa on Gandhamādana

The curse came true. Vinatā made a wager with her sister, and Kadrū's sons, the serpents, made it false by a trick, and so Vinatā became Kadrū's slave. The serpents told Garuḍa that he and his mother would be free if he brought them the nectar of the gods, the soma that makes the gods undying. When Garuḍa set out to steal the nectar, to free his mother from her slavery to Kadrū, he came to his father, and his father asked him why. The serpents have sent me to fetch the nectar, said Garuḍa, and I will bring it today to free my mother from slavery. My mother told me to eat the Niṣādas, a people who live in a lonely bay of the sea, and I have eaten thousands, but I am not satisfied. Tell me, father, of some other food, so that I may have strength to bring the nectar.

Kaśyapa said: There was a great seer named Vibhāvasu, very quick to anger, and his younger brother, the ascetic Supratīka. Supratīka did not want to hold their wealth in common with his brother, and spoke always of dividing it. Then Vibhāvasu said to him: Many people want division, and once they have divided, they care nothing for each other, and enemies who seem friends come between them, and they are quickly destroyed. Since you want to divide our wealth and cannot be restrained, you will become an elephant. And Supratīka cursed him back: You will become a tortoise living in the water. So, for wealth, the two of them became an elephant and a tortoise, still hating each other, proud of their size. They live in this lake. The elephant is six yojanas high and twice as long; the tortoise is three yojanas high and ten round. They are always fighting, each wanting to beat the other. Eat them, and do what you have set out to do.

Garuḍa took the elephant in one claw and the tortoise in the other and flew up, and came to a great tree, and when he landed on a branch, it broke. Hanging from it, upside down, he saw the Vālakhilya sages, and for fear of killing them he caught the branch in his beak and flew on, carrying the elephant and the tortoise and the branch, looking for a place to land, and found none.

At last he came to the great mountain Gandhamādana, and there he saw his father Kaśyapa practising austerity. His father saw him too, a heavenly bird blazing with power, swift as thought and wind, like a mountain peak, like the staff of Brahmā raised, terrible to all beings. Kaśyapa knew what was in his mind and said: My son, do nothing rash, or you will come to grief at once. Do not let the Vālakhilyas, who drink the rays of the sun, burn you in their anger.

Then, for his son's sake, Kaśyapa soothed the Vālakhilyas, perfected by austerity. Ascetics, he said, Garuḍa's undertaking is for the good of creatures. He means to do a great work. Give him leave. So the sages let go of the branch and went away to the holy Himālaya to practise austerity.

When they had gone, Garuḍa, his mouth full of the branch, asked his father: Sir, where shall I drop this branch? Show me a place where there are no brahmins. And Kaśyapa told him of a mountain empty of men, its valleys blocked with snow, that no one could reach even in thought. Garuḍa flew to it and dropped the branch, and the mountain shook, and on its peak he ate the elephant and the tortoise. Then he flew on to the gods, and when Indra, afraid of the dreadful omens, asked Bṛhaspati, the teacher of the gods, what they meant, Bṛhaspati told him: This is Kaśyapa's son by Vinatā, come to steal the nectar, and he can do even what cannot be done.

And so he did. Garuḍa broke through every guard the gods had set about the nectar, carried it off without drinking a drop, and brought it to the serpents. He set it down for them on the kuśa grass and said: From this day let my mother be no one's slave. The serpents agreed, and while they went to bathe before they drank, Indra took the nectar back to heaven, and the serpents found only the grass where it had lain.