Mount Meru shines like a heap of light. The Sun’s rays bounce off its golden peaks. The gods sit on its jewelled top, and they are worried. They want just one thing: amrita, the drink that lets them live forever.
The lotus-eyed god Narayana sees how worried they are. “Churn the Ocean with the asuras, the gods’ rivals,” he says. “Amrita will come up, and healing herbs and gems too.” To churn is to stir round and round, the way milk is stirred for butter.
They need Mount Mandara for a churning stick, but it goes as deep under the ground as it is tall. The gods pull and pull. It will not move! Narayana asks Ananta, prince of snakes, and Ananta pulls up the mountain, trees, birds and all.
At the shore the gods say, “Ocean, we have come to churn your waters for amrita.” The Ocean answers, “So be it, if I get a share. I can bear all the stirring the mountain will make.”
The king of the tortoises agrees to hold the mountain on his back. Vasuki the snake becomes the rope. The asuras hold his head, and the gods hold his tail. Everyone pulls hard, hoping for amrita.
Round and round they churn. The sea roars like thunder. Vasuki’s smoky breath turns to rain clouds that cool the tired gods, and flowers fall from the spinning mountain. Juices from trees and herbs run into the water, and the sea is white as milk.
Slowly the milky sea turns thick, like butter. But still no amrita! “We have no strength left,” the gods say. Then Narayana gives them new strength. “Go, put the mountain upright again,” he says, “and churn the water.”
Up rises the gentle Moon, with a thousand rays. Then comes the goddess Lakshmi, dressed in white. Next comes a white horse, as fast as thought. Then comes a gem for Narayana’s chest. Lakshmi and the horse go to the gods. Where is the amrita?
Then the god Dhanvantari rises from the sea with a white jar in his hand. It holds the amrita! The asuras see him and shout, “It is ours!”
The churning goes on. A huge elephant rises with four white tusks, and Indra, who holds the thunderbolt, takes him. Last of all comes a poison. It blazes up like fire, with smoke, and its smell makes all the worlds dizzy.
Brahma, the god who gives blessings, asks the great god Shiva for help. To keep the world safe, Shiva swallows the poison and holds it in his throat. From that day he is called Nilakantha, the blue-throated one.
Now the jar of amrita is in the asuras’ hands. They look at all the wonders. Lakshmi and the horse have gone to the gods, and the asuras’ hearts sink. They want Lakshmi for themselves, and they want to keep the amrita.
Then Narayana uses his magic power and becomes a beautiful lady. The asuras are so charmed that, all together, they put the jar of amrita in her hands.
The asuras put on their best armour and march toward the gods. But the lovely lady slips away with Nara, a god who carries a heavenly bow. The jar of amrita is safe with her.
The lovely lady is Narayana. From Narayana’s hands, the gods drink the amrita. How happy they are! At last they have what they wanted so much.
But one of the drinkers is not a god. It is Rahu, an asura, dressed up as a god, with his head beautifully decorated. He sips the amrita too.
The amrita has just reached Rahu’s throat when Surya the Sun and Chandra the Moon look at him. They know who he is! They tell the gods.
Whizz! Narayana’s spinning wheel, the discus Sudarshana, flies, and Rahu’s head comes away from his body. The head rises into the sky, big as a mountain top. Below, the earth and its hills shake.
Now Narayana puts away the lady’s form and is himself again. The asuras fight. They fly up and throw mountains down from the sky, but Nara shoots golden arrows, and the rocks turn to dust.
Then the asuras look up. The discus is blazing across the sky like a flame. So they go away, some deep under the earth and some into the salty sea.
The gods thank Mount Mandara and set him back in his own place. Then they carry the amrita home, and their happy shouts make the whole sky ring. In heaven, Indra gives the jar of amrita to Narayana to keep safe.
Since that day, Rahu’s head has quarrelled with the Sun and the Moon. Sometimes it catches them for a little while, and there is an eclipse. Then they shine again. And Narayana keeps the jar of amrita safe.
For grown-ups
Where this story comes from
This story is drawn from the Mahabharata, Adi Parva, Astika Parva, sections XVII–XIX, in Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s translation (1883–1896). The bard Sauti tells it inside a longer frame about two sisters, Kadru and Vinata, who see the horse that rose from the churning (XVII, XX). The book leaves the frame out. Ganguli has no verse numbers, so every reference names the section and quotes his words. Ganguli calls the same god Narayana, Vishnu and “the lotus-eyed one”. The book says Narayana on every page. In XIX Ganguli’s “Soma” is the Moon, which is the first to rise from the Ocean (XVIII “the mild Moon of a thousand rays”). XVIII also names a “Soma” after Lakshmi; the book does not guess who that is (see below). Ganguli’s “Brahman” is Brahma. It is a faithful simplification. We shortened and skipped lines, and we name them below. We did not add events, and we did not change anyone’s reasons. Eight lines need a note.
1. Rahu, Svarbhanu and Ketu. In this text the drinker is “a Danava named Rahu” (XIX). Other texts call him Svarbhanu; we did not find that name in sections XVII–XIX, and we give no verse for it. Here only the head keeps the quarrel with the Sun and the Moon; the body is “the Danava’s headless trunk” and has no name. Later tradition calls the body Ketu. In jyotish, Rahu and Ketu are the two shadow planets (chhaya graha), the two points where the Moon’s path crosses the Sun’s. These are statements of the tradition, not of this passage.
2. The lady. The text says Narayana took “the form of an enticing female” (XVIII) and was “Vishnu in the form of an enchantress” (XIX). Later tellings name her Mohini. The text does not, so the pages say “a beautiful lady” and say plainly, on page 15, that the lady is Narayana.
3. “How is the head still alive?” Children ask this too. This text does not say why. XIX says only that the amrita “had reached Rahu’s throat only” and that the head “rose up to the sky”. Another text, the Bhagavata Purana (8.9.26), says the head lived because it had tasted the amrita. The book does not make that link. For the child: “The story says the amrita had just reached his throat, and his head rose up into the sky.”
4. Nilakantha (page 11). XVIII says Shiva “held it in his throat, and it is said that from that time he is called Nilakantha (blue-throated)”. The page gives the name and its meaning, as the text does. It does not say that his throat turned blue, because the text gives only the name.
5. Who held the jar (pages 9, 12, 13). XVIII says Dhanvantari rose “with the white vessel of nectar in his hand” and the asuras cried “It be ours.” It then says the asuras “placed the Amrita in the hands of that fair damsel”, and XIX says the lady “took away the Amrita from their hands”. So page 12 says the jar is in the asuras’ hands. The text does not tell how it passed from Dhanvantari to them, and the book does not either.
6. The gum water. XVIII says that during the churning “the celestials attained to immortality by drinking of the water mixed with those gums”, before the amrita rose. The book leaves this out so that the question of the first two pages stays clear. Page 6 keeps the juices running into the sea.
7. The eclipse (page 22). XIX says that “to this day” the head “swalloweth Surya and Soma (during solar and lunar eclipses)”. Page 22 says the head “catches them for a little while” and that “then they shine again”. The second half is what anyone sees at an eclipse; the text does not say it. We chose the gentler word on purpose.
8. The Sun and the Moon at the drinking. The text says “all the gods” drank the amrita (XIX). It does not name the Sun and the Moon among the drinkers, so we do not say that they drank.
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Three things this telling leaves out, and why
- The creatures and the fires of the churning (XVIII). Sea creatures “crushed by the great mountain”, creatures of the lower regions killed, trees torn up with their birds, fires that burned the lions and elephants, and Indra’s heavy rain that put the fires out. All of this is too frightening at 6–9. Page 6 keeps the roar and one rain, from Vasuki’s breath.
- Ananta lifting Vasuki’s hood (XVIII). A detail of the churning that adds a second snake to an already full page.
- The second “Soma” (XVIII). The text lists the Moon rising, then Lakshmi, “then Soma”, then the horse, and then says “Lakshmi, Soma and the Steed … all came before the gods”. We could not tell whether this Soma is the Moon again or something else, so we left out both mentions and did not guess. Page 8 says only that Lakshmi and the horse go to the gods.
- The head’s cries and the rolling trunk (XIX). Left out as frightening. Page 18 keeps the head rising and the earth shaking.
- The battle (XIX). The weapons “by thousands”, the wounds, the blood, the dead, and the discus that “destroyed the Daityas and the Danavas by thousands”. All left out. Pages 19–20 keep the thrown mountains, Nara’s arrows and the flaming discus in the sky, which the text gives as why the asuras left.
- The Ganas (XIX). The text says the battle was “between the Asuras and the Ganas (the followers of Rudra)”. The book keeps it simple: the gods and the asuras.
Narayana speaks to Brahma and to the gods (XVII); page 2 shows only his words. The gods asking Vishnu and Brahma for a plan, and Brahma and Narayana sending Ananta (XVIII), are one sentence on page 3. Indra placing the mountain on the tortoise’s back (XVIII) is left to the picture. The gods go to Brahma and Brahma asks Narayana for their strength (XVIII); page 7 shows the gods’ words and Narayana’s answer. The Kaustubha gem and the elephant Airavata are not named. The poison Kalakuta is “a poison”. The “three worlds” are “all the worlds”. Danavas, Daityas and Asuras are all “asuras”.
The question children ask here
“Will Rahu eat the Sun?” About Rahu and the Sun, here is what the text says, and what it does not:
- The text says the head has “a long-standing quarrel” with the Sun and the Moon, and that “to this day it swalloweth Surya and Soma (during solar and lunar eclipses)” (XIX). That is how the old story explains an eclipse.
- The text does not say that the Sun or the Moon is ever hurt or lost. The Sun and the Moon are still in the sky, as every child can see.
- An eclipse lasts only a short time. Then the Sun or the Moon shines again. That last line is what we see, not a line of the text.
“Rahu’s head only catches them for a little while. Then the Sun and the Moon shine again, as they always do.”
A Sanatani Production
