Introduction:

Sampāti and Jatāyu are brothers who play a small but significant role in the Rāmayana. The latter dies trying to save Sītā from the clutches of Rāvaṇa, while the former is a key player in providing information on Sītā’s whereabouts and where she had been incarcerated by Rāvaṇa. While this much is reasonably well known, the brothers’ personal story of triumph and loss is not only not very well known but is also not spoken about in great detail, although it does find mention in the epic. The following is a recreation of this story that is one of several such multi-layered stories that embellish the Rāmayana – there is much to learn from them while reflecting upon the life lessons packaged and bundled neatly into these “side-stories”. 

Visitors

Sampāti dragged his huge body, broken wings and all, to the edge of the precipice. As he looked over the edge into the deep ravine, he saw a troop of Vānaras sitting and conversing with each other. They appeared exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and despondent. The first thought that occurred to him was that these Vānaras would take care of his food requirements for several weeks if not months – he only had to wait patiently an attribute he had in plenty for he had lived on this hillock for eight millennia – eight thousand years for a transgression he and his brother had committed. He heard some voices floating up from the ravine below and he edged closer to the precipice to hear what these Vānaras were speaking. He heard the name Jatāyu and his heart skipped a beat, why were they talking about his brother? He edged even closer and the great shadow formed by his immense form raised a canopy over the heads of theVānaras and they all looked up in shock and awe to see an immense bird perched on the edge of the cliff, looking down at them.

A young and powerful Vānara, with an exquisite physique and bright eyes, spoke in a voice filled with pain and regret:

“Ah! Death himself has come to visit us. Look at that bird waiting to devour us. We have failed in our mission to find Sītā and are being punished by the Gods for that failure. The one solace is that like the great Jatayu, we too have an opportunity to sacrifice our lives for Rama’s cause.”

This Vānara was Angada, the son of Vāli and the leader of the search party that had set out in a southerly direction in search of Sītā who had been abducted by Ravana.

Sampāti’s heart skipped a beat when he heard his brother’s name being mentioned by one of the Vānaras. It had been eight thousand years since he had last met or spoken to his brother. Who were these Vānaras and why were they here? He decided that he must find out more. He looked down once more and then launched his ancient body over the precipice and into the air. He was going to crash land and gatecrash the Vānara party! As he tumbled through the air, his mind floated back to an incident eight thousand years ago – when it all began… 

Race to the Sun

Sampāti stole a sideways glance at his brother Jaṭāyu. They were getting ready to challenge each other again. Young, strong, and sleek, the two great bird brothers were constantly trying to outdo each other. Jaṭāyu the younger brother was the more competitive of the two. Today, they had decided on a new and dangerous challenge – they wanted to see who would reach the highest point in the sky – faster, further, higher that was their goal. Sampāti once again glanced at his brother, and Jaṭāyu blinked his eye and nodded almost imperceptibly, indicating that he was ready – the two brothers stretched their gigantic bodies to the fullest, spread their wings, and shot into the air like two arrows released from a single bow. As they tore through the air, they left behind a trail of swirling winds, dust, and leaves. Even the large trees swayed in the wake of the dust storm the two brothers created in their pursuit of greatness.

The brothers were no ordinary birds, they were celestial beings, the sons of Sage Aruna and his wife Shyeni. Their father Aruna, the charioteer of Sūrya Deva was the elder brother of Garuda and the son of the great sage Kaśyapa who traced his lineage back to Prajapati Dakṣa himself.

As they flew through the air, the elder of the two, Sampāti initially stole a lead over his younger brother Jaṭāyu, but Jaṭāyu soon caught up with him and driven by the impetuousness born of youth, Jatayu soon outflew his brother soaring higher and higher into the rarefied and unexplored realms of high space. Sampāti, worried and concerned for the wellbeing of his brother, desperately chased after Jatayu. As Jaṭāyu flew and flew, becoming a speck in the sky, he entered the Sūryamaṇḍala, the outer orbital realm of the Sūrya. It was noon and Sūrya was at the apex of his blazing journey across the sky. The scorching heat waves that swirled around Sūryamaṇḍala were too much for Jaṭāyu to take – his wings started to burn and melt away in the intense heat.

Seeing his brother, collapsing under the heat of Sūrya, Sampāti summoned one last reserve of strength, flew over his brother, and spread his wings to their maximum width creating a protective umbrella over Jaṭāyu. As the brothers hurtled back towards earth, Jaṭāyu recovered and stabilized his descent, Sampāti never would, his magnificent act of sacrifice meant that he had permanently lost his ability to fly, his wings burned to cinder and his body burning with the heat of the noon sun.

As Jaṭāyu recovered and slowed his descent, he found that despite the burns he had suffered, his wings were still functional and he could control his flight and descent toward earth. He looked up anxiously to locate his brother, then peered into the depths of the abyss below him, but could not find Sampāti anywhere – he had simply disappeared!

Sampāti meanwhile hurtled down from the sky like a rock dropped from the top of a mountain, he had no control over his descent. His efforts at trying to flap his non-existent wings were of no avail, he was heading towards a gigantic crash landing. He closed his eyes and prepared for death – who could survive a fall from such a height? As his mind floated away, he was suddenly jolted back to reality when he felt himself crashing through the branches of trees and then he fell with a thud on one of the hillocks of the Vindhya mountain range – even though he hit the ground hard, he felt nothing, everything seemed to be like a dream, he could see his own blood spreading across the ground from beneath his body before he slipped into a deep coma. Jaṭāyu meanwhile had landed in Janasthāna capital of the forest-covered region known as Daṇḍakāraṇya, within the  Godāvarī river basin – for several years, he would hold his own in a region infested with demons, Rākṣasas, and Asuras, till his epochal clash with Rāvaṇa, several thousand years later. The brothers, however, would never meet again while alive. 

Sampāti would wake up several weeks later, having been nursed back to health by the sage Nishakara, a great Brahmaniṣṭha who lived there. This sage through intense tapas had gained the knowledge of the past-present-future continuum and therefore could foresee all events that would unfold in the future. This Ṛṣi not only nursed Sampāti back to health, but he also taught him all that he knew and also predicted that he would play an important role in helping an avatara of Viṣṇu and it would be this help that would redeem Sampāti. The sage after a few years attained Samadhi but Sampāti remained, waiting patiently for the day he would be redeemed. Some intuition from within him had told him that this chance encounter with these Vānaras was the redemption that the sage had promised him, when he heard the name of his brother, his intuition had gotten stronger and he had made that leap of faith from the cliff to the ground below where the Vānaras were assembled.

Sampāti had jumped off the cliff when he had heard the name of his brother and during the short flight down, the story of his entire life had flashed before his eyes. Sampāti landed with a gigantic thud even as the Vānaras scattered in all directions, frightened out of their wits at the sight of this giant, flightless bird that had suddenly landed in their midst. They initially thought him to be a Rākṣasa but later when they heard the bird speak to them in a gentle voice, they realized that this was no ordinary bird, but a celestial being, and perhaps he was the solution to their efforts at finding the whereabouts of Sītā Devi. 

Redemption

Sampāti first and foremost asked the Vānaras about his brother Jaṭāyu. The Vānaras narrated to Sampāti the brave fight that Jaṭāyu had fought against Rāvaṇa and how he died after his wings had been clipped and the Asura had gravely wounded him. 

Sampāti held back tears and remained silent for a long time, the lessons he had learned at the feet of the sage Nishakara and the tapas he had performed had given him the fortitude to accept anything and everything as the inexorable cycle of life playing itself out, even the death of his brother Jaṭāyu was part of that never-ending cycle of Samsāra. He mulled over the irony of Jaṭāyu losing the very same wings that Sampāti had saved by sacrificing his own. On Sampāti’s request, the Vānaras got together and with their combined strength, gently carried the giant bird to the water’s edge, where the ancient bird performed the last rites of his brother and offered ablutions to the departed soul.  

He then sat down in the midst of the Vānaras and heard the story of Rāma, leading up to the abduction of Sītā and how this search party of Vānaras had come to this place near the Vindhyas. He then told the Vānaras about his own story, leaving out nothing, starting with the ill-fated race to the Sun, the time he had spent with the sage Nishakara and the promise that the sage had given him and the role he would play in helping Rāma find his dear Sītā.  

Sampāti then told them how he had learned of Sītā’s abduction by Rāvaṇa from his son Supārśva – it was this son of Sampāti, who had taken care of his father after the sage Nishakara had passed away. Supārśva used to bring food for his crippled father and even feed him on certain days. One such day he recounted what he had seen while hunting for food:

“Father, in trying to find food for you, I stationed myself on the entrance to the Mahendra mountain range – there, while waiting to ambush prey at the entrance to the pass, I saw a powerful, dark-skinned man, carrying a woman as beautiful as the dawn – the woman was crying and calling out the names of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇā. I initially thought I would capture them both as prey, but some instinct stopped me and I saw them streaking through the air towards that distant island in the sea…” 

Sampāti then told the Vānaras of how his intense tapas of several thousand years had sharpened his vision to the extent that he could see to a distance of more than a thousand yojanas. He told them that he could actually see Sītā Devi in the Aśokā-vana of Lanka. As soon as he had uttered these words, then he found a strange energy seeping through his body, he and the Vānaras saw with open-mouthed awe as his body took on a golden hue and his wings started to grow back and the body that had seemed broken and ancient now had taken on a youthful and energetic appearance – Sampāti had finally found redemption!

He told the Vānaras to delay no more and do the utmost to free Sītā Devi from the clutches of the evil Rāvaṇa. 

Questions without answers

This is no straightforward story of pain and redemption – there are so many layers that remain unexplored and unanswered:

• Why did Jatāyu never make the effort to locate his brother?
• Did Jatāyu assume that his brother had died in the fall from heaven? Even if it be so, why did he not make any effort to trace his brother’s body or find out what happened to him?
• Why did Sampāti never make an effort to contact his brother Jatāyu and inform him about the state he was in? Couldn’t he have sent word through his son Supārśva or anyone else for that matter?
• Was there a lingering sense of shame or inadequacy that Sampāti felt that prevented him from reaching out to his brother? Perhaps he did not want his brother to see him in his present crippled state?
• Isn’t it ironic that Sampāti’s wings grow back after he tells the Vānaras about Sītā Devi’s whereabouts even as Jatāyu loses his while trying to save Sītā Devi from the clutches of the evil Rāvaṇa? After 8,000 long years, the roles are reversed, although Jatāyu does not live for long in a crippled state (unlike Sampāti) – his other injuries, meant that he died in the hands of Rāma – Jatāyu finds deliverance in death while Sampāti in his rebirth!
• How did Sampāti or for that matter Jatāyu live for 8,000 years? Is it an allegory to indicate how long one must struggle on the path to redemption? Is the anecdote of the flight to Sūryamaṇḍala an indication of a premature attempt at attaining a higher spiritual state without having put in the hard yards, and the consequent tragedy a warning for those on this path? There could be several ways to answer these questions, but how do they matter to us? Shouldn’t it be enough for us to soak in the beauty of the story and take the life lessons we want from them, rather than dissect and trisect them for banal conjecture?

There are many questions and many possible answers. This is the very nature of the many stories that inform us of Hindu Dharma – layered, interwoven, complex; yet beautiful and evocative – like the great treasure house that has enough for everyone and never goes empty – each one of us can come and take what we want to guide us along the path we seek to walk on…