Vinata and Kadru are sisters. They are the daughters of Daksa and wives of Kasyapa. Pleased with their love and devotion, Kasyapa offered them a boon. Each wife asks for her heart’s desire. Kadru asks that she be the mother of 1000 sons. And that her sons should be the nagas, invincible and powerful. Her boon is granted.
Vinta asks for two sons, but the condition is that they should be more powerful than all of Kadru’s sons. Her boon too is granted.
Soon the sisters lay eggs: Kadru lays 1000 eggs and Vinta, two. And things seem to be going to plan. The sisters are pleased with their lot and Kasyapa is busy building the world.
The nagas are born first. And Kadru is delighted. But Vinta’s eggs seem to be as they were when they first came out. Day by day, Kadru’s joy with her sons seems to grow and multiply. Seeing her thus, Vinta frets because her egss haven’t hatched. She watches over them day and night, but it is of little use. The eggs stay just as they are. One day, unable to bear the suspense any more, Vinta breaks one of her eggs. And out comes a half-formed boy. He has no legs and his body looks like a lump of flesh. He is Aruna.
Aruna is furious with his mother for her impatience. She has left him crippled and misshapen. He curses her. Driven by jealousy, you have harmed your own child so may you suffer, he says. May you become a slave to your sister! Vinta is grief-stricken and begs to be forgiven. After some time, Aruna’s temper having suitably cooled by then, he relents and says that she can be released from her curse if she is patient enough to let the second egg hatch in its own time. The son that will be born from that egg will deliver her from slavery, but until then she will have to do as her sister says.
Having said this, Aruna flies up to the skies and becomes the red dawn, or as some versions say, he becomes the charioteer of the sun. In many sculptures and paintings, Aruna is shown as a half formed man, holding the reins of the horses that drive Surya’s chariot.
And the second egg was allowed to hatch in time and a god was born from it. This is the god we know as Garuda, a mythical bird that looks like a mix between an eagle and a falcon and who is also Vishnu’s vahana.
STORY COLLECTED BY: Arundhuti Dasgupta
SOURCE: Mahabharata, Adi Parva; Translated by K M Ganguli and The Sanskrit Epics’ Representation of Vedic Myths by Danielle Feller
LOCATION: Pan India
IMAGE
