Bhagavatam · The Churning of the Ocean

Parikshit sat silent for a while, then looked at Shukadeva.

“Bhagavan, yesterday you let me hear the cry of that king of elephants, the one Shri Hari caught as he was going under. I have only a few days left now, and one question keeps rising in me. Why does the good come so hard to the hand? Why is so much sorrow bound up with every joy?”

A faint smile passed through Shukadeva’s eyes. “Rajan, that very question once stood before the devas themselves, and its answer lay at the bottom of an ocean. Listen.”

There was a time when the devas had lost everything.

They had been broken on the field of battle, cut down by the asuras in such numbers that their dead no longer rose, and over the three worlds hung a curse. The sage Durvasa had once carried down a garland of divine flowers from the Lord’s own hand and offered it, as a mark of grace, to Indra. Indra, swollen with his own glory, let the garland slip to his elephant, and the great beast took it up and ground it into the dust. The sage cursed him on the spot: the splendor of the three worlds would drain away. And so it had. Strength, radiance, lordship, and luster went out of the gods, and Shri, the fortune of the worlds herself, was nowhere to be found.

Dimmed and helpless, the gods took counsel among themselves and arrived at nothing. So they went first to Brahma, on the summit of Mount Meru, and laid the whole of it before him. Brahma saw that the trouble ran deeper than any cure of his own. He set the gods behind him and led them further still, past the reach of Maya, to the region of the unconquerable Lord.

There, praised in the gentlest of voices, Shri Hari appeared before them. The blaze of his body was as though a thousand suns had risen together, and the devas could not hold him in their gaze.

He understood everything, and in a voice deep as a raincloud he laid out a plan.

“Time itself favors the asuras just now,” he said. “Alone, you will never defeat them. When a great work has to be done, one makes peace even with enemies. Go to your cousins, the sons of Diti and Danu, and bind a truce with them.”

“And then, Lord?”

“Then churn the Ocean of Milk, all of you together. Priceless treasures lie in the depths of that sea, and among them is amrita, the nectar of deathlessness. So vast an ocean will never be churned by you alone. Tell the daityas the nectar will rise, and that all who drink it live forever, you and they alike. Cast into the milk every plant and healing herb you can gather; set up Mount Mandara for a churning-rod and Vasuki, king of serpents, for a rope; and churn on without tiring, with me for your helper. Give the asuras their way in whatever they ask. The toil and the torment will be theirs. The fruit will be yours.”

“Will they agree to this, Bhagavan?”

“Who lets go the lure of amrita? They will agree. But hear this, and hold to it. Keep your patience through the churning. First the ocean will throw up the Kalakuta poison; do not fear it. And whatever treasure rises after, covet none of it, and give way to no anger, even should it be seized from your hands.”

The gods went down to Bali, king of the daityas, son of Virocana, who had conquered all three worlds and sat throned among the captains of his host. At the sight of the gods his generals sprang up, ready to strike, but Bali knew the hour for war from the hour for peace, and he held them in check. Then Indra, with careful and courteous words, set before him everything the Lord had taught. The truce pleased Bali, and it pleased the demon chiefs about him, Shambara and Arishtanemi and the dwellers of Tripura. So the two hosts, gods and asuras together, turned their whole strength toward the winning of the nectar.

The first labor was the mountain itself.

Roaring like lions, gods and asuras together tore Mount Mandara out of the earth and set off to carry it to the sea. But the weight of it was more than their arms could bear. Far short of the shore their strength failed, and Indra and Bali and the rest let it slip from their hands. Down it came like a second Sumeru, and where it fell it crushed whole ranks of gods and asuras beneath it.

Then the Lord came, borne on Garuda. One look from him healed the broken and raised the fallen, as though the mountain had never touched them. He lifted Mandara with a single hand, set it on Garuda’s back, and carried it the rest of the way to the shore. There he sent the great bird off, for the rope still to come was Vasuki, and no serpent will go near the eagle who is the ancient enemy of all his kind.

Now the rod stood ready on the shore. Only the rope remained.

They summoned Vasuki, king of serpents, won him over with the promise of his own share of the nectar, and wound him around the mountain’s waist for a cord.

At the very start, the Lord took his place toward Vasuki’s head, and the devas gathered on that side with him. This the daitya generals would not have. Proud of their birth and their learning in the Vedas, they said, “The tail is the inauspicious end of a serpent. We will not hold it.” So the Lord, with a smile, gave up the head and took the tail along with the devas, and the end with the hood passed into the daityas’ hands.

It did not occur to the daityas that the hooded end was the one that would soon breathe fire and spew venom.

The churning began. The devas hauled from one side, the daityas from the other. The mountain turned, and the sea rose in whirlpools around it.

The first trouble came at once. With nothing to rest on, Mandara began to sink, and though the strongest of gods and asuras held it, before their eyes it went down into the water. Then the Lord took the shape of a vast tortoise, sank to the ocean floor, and lifted the drowning mountain onto his back. His shell spread a hundred thousand yojanas across, eight hundred thousand miles, a continent in itself, and the whole spinning weight of Mandara was to him no more than a scratching of his back. The mountain turned again, and neither god nor asura guessed that the ground they worked upon was the Lord himself.

He was more than the ground beneath them. Into the gods on the one side he poured fresh strength, and into the demons on the other; and into Vasuki, dragged and scoured between the two straining armies, he entered as a merciful numbness, so the serpent would not feel his own torment. He was the tortoise beneath the mountain, and he stood upon its summit as well, a press of his hand holding the peak to its place.

As the churning grew violent, Vasuki’s many mouths began to breathe out smoke and fire. The daityas at the hooded end, Bali and his captains among them, were scorched by that hot breath like a stand of trees in a forest blaze, while over the devas at the tail the Lord sent down cool rain, and breezes off the waves came to fan them.

Hour upon hour the churning went on, and still the nectar did not come. At last the unconquerable Lord himself took the rope in his own arms and churned.

The first thing the churning brought up was the Halahala poison. Black and thick, it spread upward and downward and into every quarter of the sky, and the heat of it alone set the breath trembling in every living body.

God and demon alike fell back in terror. Against a poison like that there was no defense anywhere. So all the peoples of the worlds, with the Prajapatis at their head, ran for refuge to Shiva, for who else could take the weight of the world’s protection upon himself?

Shiva sat on Kailasa with Sati beside him. The Prajapatis sang his praise and told him of the ruin that had come upon every living thing. His heart filled with pity. He turned to Sati and said, “Look at the grief this Kalakuta has brought down on the worlds. To shield the helpless is the whole duty of the strong. The good protect other lives even at the cost of their own passing one.” Sati, who knew what her lord was, gave her consent. Then, perfectly calm, he gathered the Halahala into his palm and drank it down, the way a man takes a sip of medicine.

The poison rose and lodged in his throat. The throat turned blue, and that blue became his ornament. Blue-throated, Nilakantha, they have called him ever since. The watching worlds blessed the deed, and Brahma and Vishnu with them. The little that dripped from his palm was taken up by the scorpions and the snakes, the venomous herbs, and every biting, stinging thing that lives.

The churning began again.

Now the ocean started to give up its treasures, one after another.

First came Surabhi, the cow of plenty, the Kamadhenu who answers every wish. The rishis who expound Brahman took her, for the milk and the ghee the yajna needs.

Then rose Uchchaihshravas, a horse white as the moon. Bali desired him, and Indra, as the Lord had counseled, made no claim.

Then came Airavata, the white king of elephants with four great tusks, whose whiteness rivaled the glory of Kailasa itself.

Then the Kaustubha gem rose from the water, and the Lord set it upon his breast.

Then the Parijata tree, the glory of the heavens, that grants a suppliant whatever he asks of it.

Then a troop of apsaras, robed in fine cloth and golden chains, the chime of their anklets going before them, with their charming step and their playful glances.

And then the waves of the ocean seemed to hold still for a moment. Out of the water rose Shri Lakshmi herself, radiance pouring from every limb, her splendor flashing over the quarters like lightning against the crystal slopes of Mount Sudama.

Gods and demons alike stopped where they stood at the sight of her. The churning-rope hung slack in every hand. One longing rose in all of them at once: let this Shri come to me. For they knew that whoever her eyes chose would become the master of all fortune.

Indra brought her a wonderful throne. The great rivers took human form and poured out holy water from golden jars; Mother Earth gave the herbs for the consecration; the cows gave the panchagavya, their five sacred gifts; and Spring laid out the flowers and fruits of its two months. The rishis set the rite in order, the gandharvas raised auspicious song while their wives danced, the clouds sounded drum and tabor, conch and flute and lute, and the elephants of the four quarters bathed her from golden jars while the Brahmanas chanted.

The ocean gave her two lengths of yellow silk. Varuna offered the Vaijayanti garland, its honey drawing bees that reeled as they flew. Vishvakarma gave ornaments of every kind, Saraswati a necklace of pearls, Brahma a lotus, and the nagas a pair of earrings.

Then Lakshmi took a fresh garland of lotuses in her hands and went through the whole assembly, weighing every face, the demons’ and the gods’ alike, in search of a lord who was faultless and lasting and whole in every virtue.

In one she found great penance, and beside it an anger he had never mastered. Another held wisdom, and clung to it with attachment. A third was mighty, and a slave to his own wanting. One leaned his whole power on someone else, and so could be no true lord. Another kept the law to the letter and had no tenderness for a single living thing. One gave with an open hand and a hidden motive. One was brave, and still within the reach of time. She found long life without sweetness, and sweetness without the promise of long life; and where all of it came together in a single person, that person had no wish for her.

One alone stood apart. Every virtue whole in him, without a flaw, beyond decay, and asking for nothing.

She came forward and stopped where the Lord stood, serene, wanting nothing. She laid the fresh lotus garland around his neck, and with a shy smile she made his breast her lasting home and took her place at his side.

Shri chose the one who had no craving for any treasure.

Where her glance had fallen, the gods and all the worlds grew gracious and rich in virtue. The devas overflowed with joy; the daityas were left to swallow their disappointment. And the ones her eyes had passed over grew shameless, listless, and grasping from that day on.

After her rose Varuni, the lotus-eyed goddess of wine. With the Lord’s leave, the daityas took her.

But the turn the whole story had been moving toward was still ahead.

Last of all, Dhanvantari rose from the sea, dark and strong-limbed, a jar brimming with amrita in his hands, born from a single ray of Vishnu. It was he who gave the world the science of healing, and he who takes his share of every sacrifice.

The instant they saw the jar, the daityas lunged. “The amrita is ours.” They wrenched it away by force and ran.

The gods, robbed, turned to the Lord. He told them not to lose heart. He would set the thieves against one another, he said, and win the nectar back through his own maya, in a shape none of them would be able to resist.

Among the daityas the quarrel was already breaking out. “I drink first.” “No, I do.” Those whose hands had never reached the jar began to plead the other side’s cause: the devas had labored just as hard, they too deserved a share, and that was the eternal law. The very amrita they had churned the whole ocean to win had become the seed of their war with one another.

Then the Lord, who knows every stratagem there is, took on the wondrous form of Mohini. But that is the tale ahead, Rajan, and you will hear it in its own time.

With this Shukadeva paused a moment, and looked at Parikshit.