the grand battle..

the grand battle..

Now the real battle for Amrutha began.   The mighty garuda after making himself fortified with a grand meal of the elephant and tortoise and sufficiently backed up by the blessings of his father Kashyapa and the sages Valakhilyas, made it straight to the heaven where the pot containing the Amrutha ( also termed as Soma in many parts of this story in Mahabharatham) was kept in great security.  The pot was guarded by one Brahmana ( a name and not the caste)  who was of immense strength and shone like the resplendent Sun.  Garuda simply made a frontal attack on him with his talons, beak and wings and within seconds  the guard fell unconscious.  Meanwhile the movement of the wings of Garuda had blown up so much of dust in the environs that it was almost a night in the daylight for heaven.  The gods who had all armed themselves with their select weapons to attack the bird, started hitting each other with those weapons in the blinding dust.  Indra the lord of gods ordered Vayu, the wind god to blow hard and drive away the dust, which the latter did effectively.  But by that time the gods had either mangled themselves by attacking one another in darkness or by being hit by the wings and talons of Garuda.  The heaven witnessed a lot of flow of blood from  the well nourshed bodies of gods.  However when the dust settled down the gods led by Indra started attacking Garuda with whatever weapons and energy they were left with.  Garuda gave out a loud roar and  arming himself with many weapons obtained by his inherent powers, hit back at the gods without any wavering. The Saadhyas were on flight towards the east, the Vasus and Gandharvas were efficiently using their feet to reach the farthest location in the south,  the Adityas were seen darting towards west  and the twin Ashwins found themselves landed up in the farthest northern terrain.  Garuda fought with the Yakshas, Ashwakraandas, Rainuka, Kritanaka, Tapana. Uluka (the lord of Owls), Swasanaka, Nimesha, Prajula and Pulina, and  managed to make them all  into a bundle of mashed meat. (The names given are of various leaders of the groups of warriors among the inhabitants of heaven.. suffice to say it was hell for them that day).   The valour of Garutman  resembled the power of Lord Shiva at the time of destruction of the Universe at the end of a kalpa.   The clouds were soaked with blood of all types of gods and looked dark red.

After rendering the opponents to complete ineffectiveness, Garuda proceeded towards the place where Amruta was kept.   

He found that the location was covered with flames very difficult to penetrate.  Immediately, by his yogic powers, Garuda assumed ninety times ninety forms of himself and sucked up all the sources of water in the universe through his beaks and poured the entire liquid on the fire.  After extinguishing the fire, the Gaurda assumed a normal size and the hue of gold and forcibly entered the place where amruta was kept.  The gods had deviced  a rotating iron weapon like a fan with blades  as sharp as razor edges on both sides and placed with little gap between one another.. the weapon was rotating at a dizzy speed.  In the normal course, anyone who went near the  wheel would have been cut into millions of pieces in a second.  Within the line of this wheel two snakes were stationed.  They shone like lighted fire and from their mouths venom was spraying in all directions.  Their eyes were glowing so fiercely  that an average living  thing would have been reduced to ashes even at the sight of them.  Their power essentially lied in their ever open eyes.  The son of Vinatha kicked up huge clouds of dust and covered the eyes of the snakes  and then with great speed and alacrity, caught hold of them and mangled them to death.  Then he assumed a very tiny form and negotiated the gap between the blades of the rotating fan and got hold of the pot of amrutha without any delay.

Thus the great Garutman ultimately became the master of  the Kalasa (pot)  full of amrutha.

Further narration will follow.

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।श्रीकृष्णो रक्षतु।
|śrīkṛṣṇo rakṣatu|
Have a nice and happy day
with profound respect and warm regards
K V Ananthanarayanan
blog   http://kanfusion.blogspot.com/
त्यजन्तु बान्धवाः सर्वे निन्दन्तु गुरवो जनाःI
तदापि परमानन्दो गोविन्दो मम जीवनंII
let all my relatives abandon me, let the great people insult me, still I am in supreme bliss since my life  is GOVINDA alone.
Iकृष्णात् परं किमपि तत्वं अहं न जाने"I
लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनो भवन्तु।
lokāḥ samastāḥ sukhino bhavantu|