Suparṇākhyāna

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Shout, thunder, reach the clouds; these waters of thine shall be level with the mountain-tops... Undefined, wholly water, the shore shall be: the frog-female shall croak all the night. (The winds) shall milk the cloud (cow) whose trail drips with milk, the wild beast shall come seeking firm land.

— Suparṇākhyāna, ix.3 (conjuring of a storm)[1]
Relief depicting a portable Garuda pillar, one of the oldest images of Garuda, Bharhut, 100 BCE.[2]

The Suparṇākhyāna, also known as the Suparṇādhyāya (meaning "Chapter of the Bird"), is a short epic poem or cycle of ballads in Sanskrit about the divine bird Garuda, believed to date from the late Vedic period.[3][4][5][6] Considered to be among the "earliest traces of epic poetry in India," the text only survives "in very bad condition,"[3] and remains "little studied."[7]

The subject of the poem is "the legend of Kadrū, the snake-mother, and Vinatā, the bird-mother, and enmity between Garuda and the snakes."[3] It relates the birth of Garuda and his elder brother Aruṇa; Kadru and Vinata's wager about the color of the tail of the divine white horse Uchchaihshravas; Garuda's efforts to obtain freedom for himself and his mother; and his theft of the divine soma from Indra, whose thunderbolt is unable to stop Garuda, but merely causes him to drop a feather.[5] It was the basis for the later, expanded version of the story, which appears in the Āstīka Parva, within the Ādi Parva of the Mahābhārata.[3][5]

The Suparṇākhyāna's date of composition is uncertain; its unnamed author attempted to imitate the style of the Rigveda,[3] but scholars agree that it is a significantly later composition, possibly from the time of the early Upanishads.[5] On metrical grounds, it has been placed closest to the Katha Upanishad.[3] A date of c. 500 BCE has been proposed, but is unproven, and is not agreed upon by all scholars.[4]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Maurice Bloomfield (1896), "On the 'Frog-hymn,' Rig-Veda vii.103, together with some remarks on the composition of the Vedic hymns", in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Volume 17, pp. 173–179
  2. ↑ Gupta, The Roots of Indian Art, 1980, p.29
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Moriz Winternitz (1996). A History of Indian Literature, Volume 1. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 291–292. ISBN 978-81-208-0264-3.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Maurice Winternitz (1985). History of Indian Literature, Volume 3. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 180. ISBN 978-81-208-0056-4.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Jean Philippe Vogel (1995). Indian Serpent-lore: Or, The Nāgas in Hindu Legend and Art. Asian Educational Services. pp. 53–54. ISBN 978-81-206-1071-2.
  6. ↑ Barnett, L. D. “Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, vol. 2, no. 4, 1923, pp. 807–810.
  7. ↑ Jamison, Stephanie; Witzel, Michael (1992). "Vedic Hinduism" (PDF). Harvard University. p. 14.
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