The Wind on the Mountain

When Śuka had heard this, his mind was settled and his purpose clear. He had seen the Self by the Self. Content and at peace, he set off in silence towards the north, swift as the wind, to the Himālaya.

On the eastern side of that mountain, on a lonely slope, his father Vyāsa was teaching the Vedas to his four pupils, Sumantu and Vaiśampāyana, Jaimini and Paila. Śuka came to his father's hermitage shining like the sun in the sky, clinging to no tree or rock on the way, like an arrow loosed from a bowstring. He took his father's feet and, glad at heart, told him everything Janaka had said.

There they lived, Vyāsa teaching his pupils and his son. In time the four pupils asked a boon: that no sixth pupil should become famous, and that the Veda should rest with the four of them and his son. Vyāsa told them to spread the Veda widely and give it only to those who were worthy, and at their request he let them go down from the mountain to the world. Then Vyāsa sat alone with his son, silent and thoughtful, and Nārada came and said to him: Why are you sitting silent, as if brooding? Without the sound of the Veda this mountain has lost its light. Recite the Vedas with your wise son, and drive away the darkness with the sound of the Veda.

So Vyāsa and Śuka recited the Vedas together, in loud voices that seemed to fill the worlds. As they recited, a great wind rose, driven from the ocean, and Vyāsa stopped his son: It is not a time for recitation. Śuka, curious, asked him where the wind came from, and Vyāsa, wondering at him, said: Divine sight has opened in you, and your mind is clear. You see the Self by the Self as one sees one's own reflection in a mirror. And he told him of the seven winds that blow through the worlds, and that when the breath of the god Viṣṇu blows in fury the world trembles, and so those who know the Veda do not recite it when the wind is high. Then he told his son, Recite, and went away to the Gaṅgā of the sky, the heavenly river.