Birds and heroes

In the earlier post, I had written briefly about Garuda whose heroic feat earned him his place as Vishnu's vahana. Garuda, unlike Gayatri, is a male bird and he fetches Amrita for his mother while Gayatri gets Soma for the gods. The two myths use similar motifs but may have been developed for completely different purposes.

For one the Garuda myth is much longer and far more layered than the one about meters. Garuda's unusual birth is described in detail as is his journey to get the Amrita. He has to get it to free his mother, ensnared by her sister and her snake children. Gayatri has to get Soma because the gods want it, the myth does not offer a deeper rationale for the quest.

The other difference is that Garuda has to cross several barriers and fight the guards of Amrita to be able to get a jar for his mother. The meters, on the other hand, manage the exchange more amicably. Gayatri, in fact, (the myth does not say how) gets the nectar without giving up anything at all.

The Garuda myth also reflects the traditional rivalry between the snake kingdom and the kingdom of birds. The Gayatri-Soma myth does not directly touch upon any rivalries but, it is possible that the three meters or the tribes speaking these meters were in competition with each other.

So what were the myths developed for? It would be foolish to attempt a single definitive answer but it is possible that the myths were developed around the same time but by different people. Also the original Garuda myth, in all probability, has been embellished over the ages to serve different purposes. For instance, the bit about Garuda becoming a vahana for Vishnu may well be a later addition. It is possible that there existed a tribe of Garuda worshippers who were assimilated into the Vedic fold at a later stage.

The Garuda myth also goes into great detail about the birth of the hero, the call for adventure and the difficulties and the final quest. This shows that the myth has been developed over a long period of time, giving it a linear and somewhat logical narrative structure.

The Gayatri-Soma myth is not as detailed and since it deals with an abstract concept is not as easily grasped. It also seems to be created for the express purpose of establishing the supremacy of one meter or the tribe speaking in that meter over the rest. In that sense it is not a true hero myth but, in Malinowskian terms, a charter myth which is created with the sole purpose of explaining a social event or function or human behaviour.

First men

For many of us, it seems almost impossible to believe that the world we live in was shaped out of a single mass of matter – not always carved up, as it is today, into compartments of nationality, religion, colour and language.

How do I know that? Well as far as scientific evidence goes, I go with that unearthed by the genographic project of National Geographic which has traced the origin of all humanity to Africa. But for those who do not always depend upon the physical sciences to validate their beliefs, even a cursory sip of the sloshing brew of world mythology would have pointed to the same.

The similarities, the shared motifs and imagery and the common fascination with events beyond our ken point to a people united in flesh and spirit. This story from African mythology, mentioned by Joseph Campbell in his book, Historical Atlas of World Mythology: The way of the animal powers is a lovely example.

Called Forbidden Fruit-A Bassari Legend (page 14 of the book), it is about a being called Unumbotte who created the first human and called him Man. He then created antelope and called him Antelope and then made a snake and called him, well what else, Snake. At the time that the three creatures came into existence, the world had no trees except for one: the palm tree. Nor had the earth been pounded smooth. It was rough and scrabbly, much like the insides of a dead volcano (perhaps).

The three, Man, Antelope and Snake, lived off the land and forged a strong bond. One day as they sat quietly staring into the distance, Unumbotte came to them. He said, “The earth has not yet been pounded. You must do that.” He then handed out a variety of seeds and asked them to go plant them.

Some time later Unumbotte came back to earth only to find that the ground had not been beaten smooth but, the seeds had been sown. And one of the seeds had even sprouted a tree that rose tall and high and bore a red fruit. Unumbotte said nothing.

From that day on however, every seven days, Unumbotte would return to earth and pluck one of the fruits off the tree and take it back with him. One day, Snake said to the tohers, “We too are hungry. Why don’t we pluck one of the fruits and eat it?” Man and wife (we don’t know how wife came to be, the story does not go into the details) agreed but Antelope said, how can we eat it when we don’t know anything about it. So he ate the wild grass instead.

When Unumbotte came for his weekly fruit gathering ritual, he asked his flock, “Who asked you to eat the fruit?” When they said that it was Snake, he then asked, “Do you feel hungry?” When they said yes, he said that from then on man would eat fruit, antelope grass but snake was given poison and asked to use it at his discretion.

Campbell says that the story was orally collected, the tribe that told the story had not had any contact with civilisation or Christian missionaries and they said that this story had been handed down to them by their elders.