Samudra Manthan

Summary

The churning of the ocean is a story in the myths of India in which the gods and their rivals, the Asuras, churn the ocean together to bring out of it the drink of immortality, amṛta. Its Sanskrit name is समुद्रमन्थन, samudra-manthana, "the churning of the ocean". Its oldest complete telling is in the first book of the Mahābhārata, where the narrator Sauti tells it in answer to a question: where did the horse Uccaiḥśravas come from, on which the mother of Garuḍa and her sister laid their wager? Mahābhārata, Ādi Parva 17, Ganguli's translation.

The gods met on Mount Meru seeking amṛta, and Nārāyaṇa, that is Viṣṇu, said to Brahmā: let the gods and the Asuras churn the ocean together, and amṛta will come out, with herbs and gems. Ananta, the king of serpents, tore up Mount Mandara with its woods and all that lived in them, and the gods brought it to the shore; the Ocean said: do it, on condition that I have a share. The king of tortoises agreed to hold the mountain on his back, and Indra set it there. They made the mountain the churning staff and the serpent Vāsuki, one of the Nāgas, the cord; the Asuras held the serpent's head and the gods its tail, and they pulled. From the strain, black smoke and flame came out of Vāsuki's mouth and became clouds that rained on the tired gods; the mountain's trees fell into the water, rubbed together and caught fire, and Indra put the fire out with rain; the sea creatures died under the mountain. The juices of the trees and herbs ran into the water, which turned to milk and then to clarified butter, and still no amṛta came. The gods were exhausted; Nārāyaṇa gave them new strength, and they churned again. Out came the moon, then Lakṣmī in white, then Soma, then the white horse, then the gem Kaustubha that adorns Nārāyaṇa's breast, then Dhanvantari the physician carrying the white vessel of amṛta, then the elephant Airāvata, which Indra took. Last of all came the poison Kālakūṭa, blazing like fire, so that the three worlds were stupefied by its smell, and Śiva, at Brahmā's request, swallowed it to save creation and held it in his throat, and from that day he is called "Blue-throat".

When the Asuras saw all this they wanted Lakṣmī and the amṛta for themselves, so Nārāyaṇa took the form of a bewitching woman; they lost their reason at her beauty and put the amṛta in her hands, and she took it and gave it to the gods. One of the Dānavas, named Rāhu, sat among the gods in a god's guise and drank; when the amṛta had reached his throat, the Sun and Moon recognised him and told the gods, and Nārāyaṇa cut off his head with his discus. The head rose to the sky crying out, and the body fell to the ground so that mountains and islands shook. Since then there has been enmity between Rāhu's head and the Sun and Moon, and to this day it swallows them: these are the eclipses. Then the gods and Asuras fought on the shore of the salt sea; the gods won by Nārāyaṇa's discus, the Asuras went into the bowels of the earth and into the sea, the gods put Mandara back in its place, and they gave Nārāyaṇa the vessel of amṛta to keep.

The idea the story turns on is that the gods cannot win immortality alone. They need their rivals' strength and a truce between them, and a mountain, a serpent, a tortoise and an ocean that asks for its share. The labour is shared and the drink is not: the truce ends in a trick, the gods take the amṛta, and the Asuras are left with the toil. Everything that comes out of the sea comes out of the same churning: the moon, the gems, the horse, the elephant, the physician, and the poison together with the remedy. Other stories come out of this one: the horse on which Garuḍa's mother lost her freedom, Śiva's blue throat, and the eclipses that Rāhu's head makes. And it shows how precious things are made in an Indian house: milk is churned with a staff wound with a cord whose two ends are pulled in turn, and the butter comes out.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since neither Hindu essay reads the name. In Monier-Williams manthana is churning, churning milk into butter, churning the amṛta out of the sea, and kindling fire by rubbing two sticks together; its verb is math, also manth, with an n that enters some of its forms. So its fixed letters are m and an aspirated th: the m and t of Arabic mataḥa. In Lane mataḥa al-māʾ is to draw water, and mataḥa al-dalw is to pull the rope of the bucket, drawing it with one hand and taking it with the other at the head of the well; matta al-ḥabl is to stretch a rope. That is what the gods and Asuras do in the story: they pull a living rope, these at one end and those at the other, until what lies at the bottom comes up. The same meaning is in Arabic makhaḍa: makhaḍa al-laban, to churn the milk in the churn and take out its butter, and makhaḍa al-dalw fī al-biʾr, to dash the bucket into the water of the well so that it fills. Samudra means in the dictionary "the gathering of waters", from sam, together, and udra, water, and we read udra on the method as Arabic ghadīr.

Linguistic Root

Matḥ and makhḍ

Monier-Williams gives manthana as kindling fire by friction, a churning-stick, shaking and agitating, churning milk into butter, and the churning out of amṛta in the Mahābhārata. So one Sanskrit verb kindles fire and brings out butter: a stick turned between the hands, or by a cord whose two ends are pulled. In Lane mataḥa al-māʾ is to draw water, and mataḥa al-dalw is to pull the rope of the bucket, drawing with one hand and taking with the other at the head of the well; camels are said to tatamattaḥ in their going when they move their forelegs alternately, as a drawer of water moves his two arms. Matta al-ḥabl is to stretch a rope; matta is also to draw water without a pulley; and tamattā fī al-ḥabl is to bear upon the rope to break or stretch it. So in Arabic m and t are pulling and straining a rope and drawing up what lies at the bottom, and in Sanskrit m and aspirated th are churning and kindling. Makhaḍa has the very sense of churning without the letters: makhaḍa al-laban, to agitate milk in the churn and take its butter; makhaḍa al-shayʾ, to shake a thing violently; makhaḍa al-dalw, to dash the bucket into the well's water; and "God revolved the years until that was their zubda, their butter", their outcome. The reading is proposed on the method: m and t are a nucleus shared by mataḥa, matta and Sanskrit math, while the kh and ḍ of makhaḍa are not in the Sanskrit word.

The sea and the pool

Monier-Williams gives samudra as "gathering together of waters", from sam, together, and udra, water, which is also the name of an aquatic animal, perhaps a crab or an otter. In Lane ghadīr is a pool of water left by a torrent, so called because the torrent left it behind, or because it is unfaithful to those who come to it and fails when it is most wanted. If the gh drops, as throat sounds drop in languages that lack them, d and r remain in their order. It is a reading proposed on the method, since udra belongs to the Indo-European family of the word for water, with Greek ὕδωρ, hydōr.

The tortoise in the essay

The project's Hindu essay reads kūrma, the tortoise, from Arabic qarama or karama, saying that the tortoise carries the earth and so keeps existence. In Lane qarama is to gnaw, the miqrama is a bed-cover, the qarm is the stallion and the chief, and karam is generosity. The letters meet, q, r and m, but the senses name neither a tortoise nor a bearer, so the reading stays the essay's and the dictionary does not support it. Monier-Williams gives kūrma as the tortoise, the earth imagined as a tortoise swimming on the waters, and Viṣṇu's second incarnation, when he came down as a tortoise to bear Mandara, as in the avatar cycle. Lane, q-r-m; Monier-Williams, kūrma.

Key Mythic Narratives

Durvāsas's curse in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa

The Viṣṇu Purāṇa begins the story with another cause. The sage Durvāsas gave Indra a garland of heavenly flowers; Indra put it on his elephant's head, the elephant threw it to the ground, and Durvāsas cursed Indra to lose his sovereignty. The gods grew weak, the Asuras overcame them, and they went to Viṣṇu, who told them to make peace with the Asuras and promise them a share of the drink, to cast herbs into the sea of milk, and to churn it with Mandara and Vāsuki. In this version Viṣṇu himself is the tortoise on which the mountain turns, while in another form he pulls among the gods and in a third sits on the summit. Things come out of the sea in another order: the cow Surabhi, then Vāruṇī, goddess of wine, then the Pārijāta tree, then the Apsarases, then the moon, which Śiva takes, then the poison, which the Nāgas take, then Dhanvantari with the cup of amṛta, then Lakṣmī on a lotus, who casts herself on Viṣṇu's breast.

Poison first in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa the poison hālahala comes out first; Śiva takes it in his palm and drinks it out of compassion for creation, and the poison leaves a bluish line on his neck that is counted his ornament. Viṣṇu in the form of a great tortoise lifts the sunken mountain, which rests on his back like a broad island. Then Dhanvantari, learned in medicine, comes out carrying the jug of amṛta; the Asuras take it from his hand, and Viṣṇu appears as a beautiful woman, Mohinī, who enchants both sides and divides the drink so that only the gods drink. Rāhu drinks in disguise and his head is cut off, but the drink had touched the head, which became immortal, so Brahmā made it one of the planets, and it attacks the sun and moon on the nights of full and new moon.

What the flood took

Monier-Williams notes under Mandara that the mountain served as the churning staff "for the recovery of the Amṛta and thirteen other precious things lost during the deluge". On this explanation the churning recovers what was drowned rather than making something new, and in the Indian flood story the fish saves Manu and his boat from drowning.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Indian myths reads the churning of the ocean as a description of a chemical extraction: the sea of milk is the raw material, the churning is stirring and distilling, the poison coming out first is the toxic substances that evaporate fastest, Śiva swallowing it is the handling of dangerous waste, his blue throat the price of chemistry, the amṛta the useful substance at the end of the process, perhaps soma or haoma; the cooperation of gods and Asuras is the opposed forces without which the reaction cannot happen, and the mountain wound with the serpent is a turning device like the drill or the churn with which butter is made. In its table of incarnations it reads the tortoise as the amphibians, the passage from sea to land.

The text itself brings the reading closer to the herdsman's house than to the laboratory. In the Mahābhārata the sea becomes milk and then clarified butter from the juices of herbs; the device is a staff and a cord whose ends are pulled; and the verb manthana is the verb for churning milk and for kindling fire with a stick. The poison comes out last in the Mahābhārata and first in the Bhāgavata, so the order of emergence differs between versions; what stays in all of them is that poison and remedy come out of one churning.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The closest story to the churning of the ocean in the North is that of Kvasir: the gods and the Vanir had been at war, made a truce, and sealed it by having both sides spit into one vessel; the gods made a man of it, his blood became the mead of poetry, and Odin stole it in the shape of an eagle, as Garuḍa, a bird, stole the amṛta. In both stories the precious drink comes out of a truce between two rival sides and is then taken by a trick.

In Japan Izanagi and Izanami stand on the bridge of heaven, dip a jewelled spear into the sea and stir the brine; when they lift it, the salt dripping from its tip piles up and becomes an island. In both stories the sea is stirred with a shaft and something comes out of it that was not above it before, land in Japan, immortality and treasures in India, as told on the separation of heaven and earth.

Rāhu, who swallows sun and moon, is one of the enemies who block the sun in the sun's journey: the wolves Sköll and Hati in the North, Apophis in Egypt, and Svarbhānu in the Rigveda, who pierces the sun with darkness. The mountain uprooted and turned is a form of the sacred mountain, and the drink as a whole belongs to the food of immortality: the White Haoma that grows at the bottom of the sea in Iran, and the plant Gilgamesh pulls up from the Apsu. Viṣṇu in a woman's form taking the drink from the Asuras is a form of the trickster.