07 – The Sisters Who Didn’t Like Each Other

Hi Friends!

Today let us explore a lesser known story, about two sisters who fought a lot, and how each suffered from that.

As briefly mentioned in an earlier post, various daughters of the Skilled Master of Creation, or Daksha Prajapati, were married to the Sage Kasyapa (who may be the Kachchhapa we met earlier).

Two of these sisters were named Kadru and Vinata. They were always trying to out-do each other. One way they used to compete was to take care of the comforts of Kasyapa. May be one cooked his favourite sweet-dish, while the other brought beautiful flowers from the garden to decorate their house. Being the grand-son of Lord Brahma, as well as a learned sage on his own, Kasyapa had divine powers of granting wishes, once pleased. Anyhow, the sisters pleased Sage Kasyapa, and so he asked them to ask for a boon each.

Kadru went first. She asked to be granted a thousand children, who are strong and afraid of nothing that is born yet. Kasyapa agreed to that.

When Vinata’s chance came she said: “I will not ask for so many sons as my sister, just give me two sons. But make it so that they are stronger than all her sons together. And let my younger son be the one they are truly afraid of.”

Kasyapa was surprised (and somewhat impressed) by Vinata’s guile, and agreed to this as well. Kadru, as was expected, wasn’t very pleased, and silently swore that she would some day avenge this trick, with trickery of her own. More of that later.

Kasyapa saw that he would need to conduct a fire-sacrifice, or yagna, to fulfil these boons. A yagna can be assumed to be any long and difficult process to get some desired results. In the mythological tales of India these always involved fire and chanting of complicated formulae, or mantras. We will talk of many such yagnas, some of them successful and some quite disastrous.

For this yagna, Sage Kasyapa asked for the help of a group of sages, called Valakhilyas. These sages were his cousins as they were sons of Sage Kratu, one of the Saptarishis, and the brother of Kasyapa’s father Sage Marichi. We had mentioned the names of the various sons of Lord Brahma in an earlier post.

The Valakhilyas were numerous, but very small. They had divine power, and guarded the wheels of the chariots of Sun, as well as the earth from the harmful rays of Sun. May be we know them by another name.

In addition, Kasyapa called the Indra the King of gods, and the eldest Aditya. Indra, was also a son of Kasyapa from another wife of his, Aditi. As we have seen earlier as well as see later, Indra seemed to be a little lax in his respect to learned sages. During the preparation of the yagna he seemed to have somehow angered the Valakhilyas, and hence they specifically put in effort that the second son of Vinata be stronger than Indra, so that some day he may defeat him.

After the yagna, Kadru was blessed with a thousand shiny eggs and Vinata with two beautiful eggs. Sage Kasyapa departed for doing additional penance, and may be worried that this competitiveness of the sisters would keep increasing if he remained with them. Before going the wise sage told the sisters to try and reduce this competitive spirit. He asked Kadru to refrain from any unnecessary trickery, as in the long run trickery ends with making unnecessary enemies. He also mysteriously advised Vinata that she should try and be patient.

The sisters waited for their eggs to hatch, while they took good care of them.

After five hundred years, the eggs of Kadru hatched one by one, and out came the Uragas (or Nagas). Each one stronger than the other. Some even say Sesha was one of her sons, though that would be complicated as Sesha, the embodiment of Time, was there at the start of time as Adi, and at the end of time as Sesha, and continues as Ananta. May be he keeps taking birth again and again. Just like a new day always starts after end of a day. Another son of Kadru is Vasuki, who was a big devotee of Lord Shiva, the Destroyer. He is always shown as the snake the Great Lord, or Mahadeva, wears around his neck lovingly like a necklace. One other son of Kadru was called Takshaka. He has many cameo roles in the epic mythological tales. Knowing all their names is not that important.

While Kadru was getting more and more happiness seeing her many and powerful sons, Vinata felt a little envious, as her two eggs didn’t show any signs of hatching.

Though advised against it by Sage Kasyapa, she started to feel a little impatient, and that gave Kadru a chance.

Kadru strolled over to Vinata, and said soothingly: “Are you sure Sister Dearest, that you took care of your eggs? As we both had our eggs together, and while all my thousand sons have hatched, your eggs remain unhatched. You sure everything is ok inside them?”

Now this really worried Vinata, and she decided to take a look into one of them.

She cracked open one of her eggs, and saw a beautiful and strong child inside. The child was bright and looked powerful, but sadly the lower part of the child’s body was still unformed, as the egg was hatched half-way of the term. The child was named Arun… sometimes Aruna, a son of Vinata, but sometimes Aruni, a daughter of Kasyapa. This is an important and interesting story, this fluidity of Arun being Aruna a boy or Aruni a girl. In a later post, we shall talk of the sons of Aruna as a man, and the sons of Aruni as a woman, and how some of them helped Lord Vishnu, when he incarnated as King Rama.

But right now Aruna/i was extremely angry, for not being allowed to reach his/her full potential. So he/she cursed Vinata that this impatience of her, this habit of taking action before thinking would make her a servant to her sister. If, and only if, she took proper care of the younger sibling still in egg, would she ever be free of that servant-hood. Saying so Aruna/i, flew up and was given the place of the chariot-driver of Lord Surya, the Sun god.

Now Vinata decided to take extra care of her second egg. Kadru was pleased to have caused such trouble to her sister, and even more pleased when she heard Aruna/i curse his/her mother to be Kadru’s servant.

While they waited for the last egg to hatch, Kadru and Vinata passed their time talking and describing to each other things they could see.

One day, they saw from far the seven-headed white horse called Uchchaishrava. As you would remember he was one of the gifts that came out of sagar manthan, along with amruta and twelve more valuable things. He could fly, so he grazed for some time and flew back to his stables.

Vinata was impressed by his beauty, and said: “What a beautiful horse it is! Pristine white from the tip of his nose to the hairs of his swishing tail.”

Kadru, who always tried to find Vinata’s mistakes, said: “I bet you that at least one of the hairs in his tail is black. Even the moon has black marks, nothing can be so spotless!”

Kadru and Vinata decided that they would go to the stables where Uchchaishrava lived, and find it out. Kadru saw a chance and added the condition that whoever was wrong would, along with her son/s, would have to be a servant to the other. Strangely Vinata agreed to it. Possibly impatient (as she was told specifically not to be), and wanting to go take care of her remaining egg.

Now Kadru could not let go of this chance to fulfil the curse of Aruna/i for Vinata. So, she called her sons, and told them to reduce their size and cover one hair of the White Horse to make it look black. The sons refused at first, as this was treachery, but later when told by their mother that if they didn’t do so, their mother, and they themselves, would become servants of their aunt, they agreed to do so.

Some stories say that they agreed on this only after Kadru cursed them to be destined to be killed and eaten by their half-brother, and/or to die in the fire of a yagna, the same way they were born in a yagna. Somehow it doesn’t feel right that a mother, whatever be the reason, would wish such bad things for her own children. So, let’s assume that this curse didn’t happen.

So the next day, when Vinata and Kadru went to inspect the tail of Uchchaishrava they found one “black” hair in that perfectly white horse.

Vinata then accepted her fate, and started serving Kadru and her sons as a mere servant. We can see this hardship of Vinata was due to her impatience, and her habit of taking action before thinking it through. May be we can learn from her mistakes, and always be patient and thoughtful in our actions, whatever be the provocation.

This hardship of Vinata went on for five hundred more years. After a thousand years had passed from the time the eggs were received by Kadru and Vinata as a result of the yagna, by the Sage Kasyapa and with the support of the Valakhilyas, the final egg started to hatch. Let us finish this story in the next post.