Garuḍa flew and remembered. It was only a few days since he had hatched from his egg and already so much had happened. Flying was the best way of thinking, of thinking things over. Who was the first person he’d seen? His mother, Vinatā. Beautiful in her tininess, she sat on a stone, watching his egg hatch, determinedly passive. Hers was the first eye Garuḍa held in his own. And at once he knew that that eye was his own. Deep inside was an ember that glowed in the breeze. The same he could feel burning beneath his own feathers.

Then Garuḍa looked around. Opposite Vinatā, likewise sitting on a stone, he saw another woman, exactly like his mother. But a black bandage covered one eye. And she too seemed absorbed in contemplation. On the ground before her, Garuḍa saw, lay a great tangle, slowly heaving and squirming. His perfect eye focused, to understand. They were snakes. Black snakes, knotted, separate, coiled, uncoiled. A moment later Garuḍa could make out a thousand snakes eyes, coldly watching him. From behind came a voice: “They are your cousins. And that woman is my sister, Kadrū. We are their slaves.” These were the first words his mother spoke to him.

Vinatā looked up at the huge expanse that was Garuḍa and said: “My child, it’s time for you to know who you are. You have been born to a mother in slavery. But I was not born into slavery. I and my sister Kadrū were brides of Kaśyapa, the great ṛṣi, the seer. Slow, strong, and taciturn, Kaśyapa understood everything. He loved us, but apart from the absolute essentials took no care of us. He would sit motionless for hours, for days—and we had no idea what he was doing. He held up the world on the shell of his head. My sister and I longed to be doing something with ourselves. An angry energy drove us from within. At first we vied for Kaśyapa’s attention. But then we realized that he looked on us as clouds do: equally benevolent and indifferent to both. One day he called us together: it was time for him to withdraw into the forest, he said. But he didn’t want to leave without granting us a favor. Immediately we thought of ourselves all alone, amid these marshes, these woods, these brambles, these dunes. Kadrū needed no prompting: she asked for a thousand children, of equal splendor. Kaśyapa agreed. I too was quick to decide: I asked for just two children, but more beautiful and powerful than Kadrū’s. Kaśyapa raised his heavy eyelids: ‘You will have one and a half,’ he said. Then he set off with his stick. We never saw him again.”

Vinatā went on: “We were the only human beings, myself and Kadrū, with a thousand black snakes about us, all of them the same, and your egg maturing imperceptibly in a pot of steaming clay. Already we loathed each other, we two sisters. But we couldn’t do without each other. One evening we were squatting down on the shore of the ocean. You know that I am also called Suparṇī, Aquilina, and perhaps that’s why I’m your mother. There’s nothing my eye doesn’t see. Kadrū has only one eye, she lost the other at Dakṣa’s sacrifice—oh, but that’s a story you could hardly know . . . Yet she too has very keen sight. One evening we were heading in the same direction, bickering and bored as ever, our eyes scanning the waters of the ocean, seeking out the creatures of the deep, the pearls. A diffuse glow in the depths led us on. We didn’t know where it came from. Then we turned to gaze at the ocean’s end, where sea joins sky. Two different lights. A sharp line separated them, the only sharp line in a world that was all vain profusion. Suddenly we saw something take shape against the light: a white horse. It raised its hooves over waters and sky, suspended there. Thus we discovered amazement. Beside the bright horse we glimpsed something dark: a log? its tail? Everything else was so distinct. That was what the world was made of, as we saw it: the expanse of the waters, the expanse of the sky, that white horse.”

Vinatā had withdrawn deep within herself. She spoke with her eyes on the ground, almost unaware of the majestic presence of her son, his feathers quivering. But she roused herself and began talking again, as though to a child, struggling both to be clear and to say only the little that could be said at this point: “In the beginning, not even the gods had the soma. Being gods wasn’t enough. Life was dull, there was no enchantment. The Devas, the gods, looked with hatred on the other gods, the Asuras, the antigods, the first-born, who likewise felt keenly the absence of the soma. Why fight at all, if the desirable substance wasn’t there to fight for? The gods meditated and sharpened their senses, but there would come the day when they wanted just to live. Gloomily, they met together on Mount Meru, where the peak passes through the vault of the heavens to become the only part of this world that belongs to the other. The gods were waiting for something new, anything. Viṣṇu whispered to Brahmā, then Brahmā explained to the others. They had to stir the churn of the ocean, until the soma floated up, as butter floats up from milk. And this task could not be undertaken in opposition to the Asuras, but only with their help. The pronouncement ran contrary to everything the Devas had previously thought. But in the end, what did they have to lose, given that their lives were so futile? Now they thought: Anything, so long as there be a trial, a risk, a task.”

Vinatā fell silent. Garuḍa respected her silence for a long time. Then he said: “Mother, Mother, you still haven’t told me how you became a slave to your sister.” “We were looking at the white horse. The more it enchanted me, the greater the rancor I felt for my sister. I said: ‘Hey, One-Eye, can you see what color that horse is?’ Kadrū didn’t answer. The black bandage leaned forward. Then I said: ‘Want to bet? The one who gets the horse’s color right will be mistress of the other.’ The following morning, at dawn, we were together again, watching the sky. And once again the horse appeared against the background of sea and sky. I shouted: ‘It’s white.’ Silence. I repeated: ‘Kadrū, don’t you think it’s white?’ To this day I have never seen such a malignant look in her eye. Kadrū said: ‘It’s got a black tail.’ ‘We’ll go and see,’ I said, ‘and whichever of us is wrong will be the other’s slave.’ ‘So be it,’ Kadrū said.

“I’ll go and win this soma, Mother,” said Garuḍa with his most solemn expression. “But first I must eat.” They were squatting down face-to-face. Garuḍa, a mountain of feathers; Vinatā, a minute, sinuous creature. “Go to the middle of the ocean,” said Vinatā. “There you’ll find the land of the Niṣādas. You can eat as many of them as you want. They don’t know the Vedas. But remember: Never kill a Brahmān. A Brahmān is fire, is a blade, is poison. Under no circumstances, even if seized by anger, must you hurt a Brahmān.” Garuḍa listened, ever more serious. “But what is a brahman, Mother?” he said. “How do I recognize one?” So far Garuḍa had seen nothing but black, coiled snakes and those two women who hated each other. He did not know what his father looked like. A brahman? What on earth can that be? wondered Garuḍa. “If you feel a firebrand in your throat,” said Vinatā “that’s a brahman. Or if you realize you’ve swallowed a hook.” Garuḍa stared straight at her and thought: “So you can’t tell a brahman until you’ve almost swallowed him.” But already he was stretching his wings, eager to be gobbling up the Niṣādas. Caught by surprise, the Niṣādas didn’t even see Garuḍa coming. Blinded by wind and dust, they were sucked by the thousands into a dark cavity that opened behind his beak. They plunged down there as if into a well. But one of them managed to hang on to that endless wall. With his other hand he held a young woman with snaky hair light by the waist, dangling in the void. Garuḍa, who was gazing ahead with his beak half open, just enough to swallow up swarms of Niṣādas, suddenly felt something burning in his throat. “That’s a brahman,” he thought. So he said: “Brahman, I don’t know you, but I don’t mean you any harm. Come out of my throat.” And from Garuḍa’s throat came a shrill, steady voice: “I’ll never come out unless I can bring this Niṣāda woman with me, she’s my bride.” “I’ve no objections,” said Garuḍa. Soon he saw them climbing onto his beak, taking care, fearful of getting hurt. Garuḍa was intrigued and thought: “Finally I’ll know what a brahman looks like.” He saw them sliding down his feathers. The brahman was thin, bony, dusty, his hair woven in a plait, his eyes sunken and vibrant. His long, determined fingers never let go of the wrist of the Niṣāda woman, whose beauty immediately reminded Garuḍa of his mother and his treacherous aunt Kadrū. This left him bewildered, while he rellected that quite probably he had already swallowed up thousands of women like her. But by now those two tiny beings were hurrying off, upright, agile, impatient, as if the whole world were opening before them. Garuḍa was more puzzled than ever. He felt an urgent need to talk to his father, whom he’d still not seen. As his wings stretched, another whirlwind devastated the earth.

Kaśyapa was watching a line of ants. He paid no attention to his son, nor to the crashing that announced his arrival. But Garuḍa wasn’t eager to speak either. He was watching Kaśyapa, his wrinkled, polished skull, his noble arms hanging down in abandon. He studied him for a while. He thought: “Now I know what a brahman is. A brahman is one who feeds himself by feeding on himself.” After a day’s silence, Kaśyapa looked up at Garuḍa. He said: “How is your mother?” then immediately went on to something else, as if he already knew the answer. “Seek out the elephant and the turtle who are quarreling in a lake. They will be your food. The Niṣādas aren’t enough for you. Then go and eat them on Rauhiṇa, that’s a tree near here, a friend of mine. But be careful not to offend the Vālakhilyas . . .”

“Who can these Vālakhilyas be?” thought Garuḍa, flying along, the elephant and the turtle tight in his claws. “No sooner does one thing seem to get clearer than another, bigger thing turns up that’s completely obscure.” While Garuḍa was thinking this over, puzzled again, his wing skimmed the huge tree Rauhiṇa. “By all means rest on a branch and eat,” said the tree’s voice. “Before you were born you sat here on me, along with a companion of yours, exactly like yourself. Perched on opposite branches, at the same height, you never left each other. You were already eating my fruit back then. And your companion watched you, though he didn’t eat. You couldn’t fly about the world then, because I was the world.” Garuḍa settled on a branch. Surrounded by the foliage that enfolded his feathers, he felt at home and couldn’t understand why. Of his birthplace he could remember only sand, stone, and snakes. Whereas this tree protected him on every side with swathes of emerald that softened the merciless light of the sky. Hmm . . . In the meantime he might as well devour the elephant and the turtle, now on their backs on this branch that was a hundred leagues long. He concentrated a moment. He was choosing the spot where he would sink his beak—when there came a sudden crash. The branch had snapped. Shame and guilt overcame Garuḍa. He knew at once that he had done something awful, without having meant to. And it was all the more awful because he had not meant it. A vortex opened up in the tree, and Garuḍa flew out with the broken branch in his beak, the elephant and the turtle still in his claws. He was lost. He didn’t know where to go. He sensed he was in danger of making a fatal mistake. From the branch came a hiss. At first he thought it was the wind. But the hissing went on, peremptory and fearfully shrill. He looked at the twigs. Upside down among the leaves, like bats, dangled scores of brahmans, each no taller than the phalanx of a thumb. Their bodies were perfectly formed and almost transparent, like flies’ wings. Used as they were to hanging motionless, the flight was upsetting them terribly. Garuḍa thought: “Oh, the Vālakhilyas . . .” He was sure it was they, sure of the enormity of his crime. “Noble Vālakhilyas,” said Garuḍa, “the last thing I want is to hurt you.” He was answered by a mocking rustle. “That’s what you all say . . .” Now he made out a voice. “The indestructible is tiny and tenuous as a syllable. You should know that, being made of syllables yourself. The tiny is negligible. So it is neglected . . .” “Not by me,” said Garuḍa. And now he began to fly in the most awkward fashion, taking the greatest possible care not to shake the branch he held in his beak. Despondent, he studied the mountains, looking for a clearing large and soft enough for him to put down the Vālakhilyas. But he couldn’t find one. Perhaps he would waste away in the sky, circling forever. It was then that a huge mountain, the Gandhamādana, began to take shape ahead, and Garuḍa thought that he might attempt a last exploration. He was flying around the summit, slowly and cautiously, when he recognized the polished head of his father, Kaśyapa, sitting by a pond on the slopes of the Gandhamādana. Garuḍa hovered over him, without making a sound. Kaśyapa said nothing, paid no attention, though the whole of Gandhamādana was veiled in shadow. Then he said: “Child, don’t be distressed, and don’t do anything rash that you might regret. The Vālakhilyas drink the sun, they could burn your fire . . .” Garuḍa was still hovering above his father, terrified. Then he heard Kaśyapa’s voice change. He was speaking to the Vālakhilyas, on familiar terms, whispering. “Garuḍa is about to perform a great deed. Take your leave of him now, I beg you, if you still think well of me . . .” A little later, Garuḍa saw the Vālakhilyas detaching themselves from the branch, like tiny, dry leaves, gray and dustly. They turned slowly in the air and slowly settled next to Kaśyapa. Soon they had disappeared among the blades of grass, heading toward the Himālaya.

Engrossed in his father’s tale, Garuḍa had almost forgotten that he was still hovering in the air, claws sinking ever deeper into the elephant and the turtle, who had long been waiting to be eaten. Not to mention that cumbersome branch, still clenched in his beak. Garuḍa didn’t dare do anything further on his own account. If he dropped the branch on one of the nearby mountains, even the most barren, and crushed so much as a single brahman, hidden in the vegetation, what then? “Thinking paralyzes,” thought Garuḍa, motionless in the sky. Kaśyapa was eager to put an end to his son’s wretched predicament. He would have plenty of time, billions of passing moments, to reflect on his crime: that broken branch. Now his father could help him. “Fly away, Garuḍa,” he said. “Go north. When you find a mountain covered with nothing but ice and riddled with caves like dark eye sockets, you can leave the branch there. That’s the only place where there’s no risk of killing a brahman. And there you can finally eat up the elephant and the turtle.” Garuḍa flew off at once.

“So many things happening, so many stories one inside the other, with every link hiding yet more stories . . . And I’ve hardly hatched from my egg,” thought an exultant Garuḍa, heading north. At last a place with no living creatures. He would stop and think things over there. “No one has taught me anything. Everything has been shown to me. It will take me all my life to begin to understand what I’ve been through. To understand, for example, what it means to say that I am made of syllables . . .” He was even happier, drenched in joy, when a barrier of pale blue ice and snow filled his field of vision, a sight that would have blinded any other eye. The branch of the tree Ranhiṇa fell with a thud, then down plunged the elephant and the turtle just a moment before Garuḍa’s beak forced a way into flesh already wrapped in a gleaming sepulchre.

“And now the theft, the deed . . . ,” said Garuḍa. Around him on an endless white carpet lay the stripped remains of the elephant and the turtle. He rose in flight, off to win the soma.

Indra tried to stop Garuḍa as he flew toward the earth. He found an accommodating and contrite expression. “There’s no point in our being enemies,” said Indra. “We are too powerful to be enemies,” he added. Then he started to cajole: “Ask me anything you want. I have something I want to ask you: don’t let the Snakes get hold of the soma.” “But I have to ransom my mother,” said the obstinate Garuḍa. “To ransom your mother all you have to do is deliver the soma to the Snakes. You don’t have to do any more than that. But I don’t want the Snakes to possess the soma. I’ll tell you what to do . . .” “If that’s how things stand . . .” said Garuḍa. He was intimidated by Indra’s self-confidence, and his reasonableness too. “After all,” thought Garuḍa, “this is the king of the gods talking.”

The Snakes had arranged themselves in a circle to await Garuḍa’s return. They saw him coming like a black star, a point expanding on the horizon, until his beak laid down a delicate plant, damp with sap, upon the darbha grass. “This is the soma, Snakes. This is my mother’s ransom. I deliver it to you. But before you drink of this celestial liquid, I would advise a purificatory bath.” In disciplined devotion, the Snakes slithered off toward the river. For a moment, the only moment of tranquillity the earth would ever know, the soma was left, alone, on the grass. A second later Indra’s rapacious hand had swooped from the heavens, and already it was gone. Gleaming with water, aware of the gravity of the moment, the Snakes could be seen returning through the tall grass. They found nothing but a place where the grass had been bent slightly. Hurriedly they licked at the darbha grass where Garuḍa had laid the soma. From that moment on the Snakes have had forked tongues.

Garuḍa said: “Mother, I’ve paid your ransom. You’re free now. Climb on my back.” They wandered over forests and plains, over the ocean, leisurely and blithe. Every now and then Garuḍa would fly down to earth to snatch bunches of Snakes in his beak. On his back, Vinatā bubbled with pleasure. Then Garuḍa took leave of his mother. He said his time had come. Once again he flew to the tree Rauhiṇa. He hid among the tree’s branches to study the Vedas.

Buried deep among the tree Rauhiṇa’s branches, Garuḍa read the Vedas. It was years before he raised his beak. Those beings he had terrorized in the heavens, who had scattered like dust at his arrival, who had tried in vain to fight him, he knew who they were now: with reverence he scanned their names and those of their descendants. The Ādityas, the Vasus, the Rudras, Varuṇa, Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Tvaṣṭṛ, Pūṣan, Vivasvat, Savitṛ, Indra, Viṣṇu, Dhātṛ, Aṃśa, Anumati, Dhiṣaṇā, Soma, Bṛhaspati, Guńgū, Sūrya, Svasti, Uṣas, Āyu, Sarasvatī. And others too. Thirty-three in all. But each had many names—and some gods could be replaced by others. The names whirled in silence. Perfectly motionless. Garuḍa experienced a sense of vertigo and intoxication. The hymns blazed within him. Finally he reached the tenth book of the Ṛg Veda. And here he smelled a shift in the wind. Along with the names came a shadow now, a name never uttered. What had been affirmative tended to the interrogative. The voice that spoke was more remote. It no longer celebrated. It said what is. Now Garuḍa was reading hymn one hundred and twenty-one in triṣṭubh meter. There were nine stanzas, each one ending with the same question: “Who (Ka) is the god to whom we should offer our sacrifice?” Estuary to a hidden ocean, that syllable (ka) would go on echoing within him as the essence of the Vedas. Garuḍa stopped and shut his eyes. He had never felt so uncertain, and so close to understanding. Never felt so light, in that sudden absence of names. When he opened his eyes, he realized that the nine stanzas were followed by another, this one separated by a space that was slightly larger. The writing was a little more uneven, minute. A tenth stanza, without any question. And here there was a name, the only name in the hymn, the only answer. Garuḍa couldn’t remember ever having seen that name before: Prajāpati.