Chapter 9: Amrit and Sudarshan Chakra
Yam continued, "Dhanvantari, the physician of Devs and the god of medicine appeared at last with a pot filled with amrit in his hands. As soon as Asurs saw the pot, they grew greedy and snatched the pot away from Dhanvantari before we could do anything. Seeing that scene, even Shukracharya was dumbfounded and as their teacher he advised them to divide the amrit in half between Dev and Asur but greed had already made them blind. They didn't listen to a single word that Shukracharya said. They ran off with amrit in Pataal Lok and celebrated for the whole night. When the party was ongoing, a beautiful enchantress named 'Mohini' appeared and proposed to entertain them. The Asurs, blinded by pride and greed did not see anything suspicious and allowed her to dance and sing for their entertainment. After a while, when everyone was drunk, she hit their pride and stated that they were afraid of Dev and that was the reason why they had snatched the pot. This actually hit their ego quite hard and they all decided to share the amrit with Devs equally. All of us Devs were then invited to drink amrit and Mohini was the one who served us amrit. She cunningly coaxed Asurs to agree to her proposal of giving the amrit to Devs first. Everything was going according to the plan but one of the Asurs named 'Swarbhanu' smelled something suspicious going on and disguised himself as a Dev and mixed up among us. He was the last to get served after all the Devs. Just as he was drinking the amrit, Surya Dev and Chandra Dev spotted his disguise. Mohini became furious and used the weapon named Sudarshan Chakra to sever the head of the Asur before the amrit could reach his stomach. The head and body got separated and were later came to be known as Rahu and Ketu individually because they became two separate beings. Seeing such a scene, all the Asurs recognized that they were fooled and the enchantress was none other than Bhagwan Vishnu in disguise. That was how we Dev became immortal and defeated the Asurs but also inadvertently caused one of the Asurs to become immortal."
Samir raised his question and asked, " You said that Bhagwan Vishnu used a weapon called Sudarshan Chakra. What's that? And why do I feel that its something more important than I am thinking?"
Yam chuckled and replied to his question, "You really do have some good intuition. You are right. Sudarshan Chakra is Bhagwan Vishnu's signature weapon. It has a lore behind it as well. Do you want to listen to it?"
Samir said without hesitation, "Yup. I sure do."
Yam then started another one of the tales packed up in his library of mind, "A very long time ago, when Bhagwan Vishnu was slaying demons to protect the Dharma, he thought about how he needed a stronger weapon for more efficiency. He then prayed to Bhagwan Brahma for a solution and was informed that he needed to offer 108 lotus flowers to Bhagwan Shiv's statue also known as 'Shivling' to show his devotion and get the weapon from him. Bhagwan Vishnu then manually searched for lotuses even though it was not the season for lotus. But miraculously, he found 107 lotuses quite easily but he wasn't able to find the 108th one. There was also a condition told by Bhagwan Brahma that he had to find the lotus in a fixed time frame. What that time frame was, well I don't know about that but I know that he wasn't able to find the last lotus till end. It was actually test for him by Bhagwan Shiv to test his devotion. Being not able to find the last lotus, Bhagwan Vishnu became sad but he suddenly remembered that one of his nicknames was 'Kamalnayan' which just means that his eyes looks like the petals of lotus. Thinking about this, he took out one of his eyeballs and offered it to Bhagwan Shiv in a show of his devotion. Bhagwan Shiv was very satisfied and happy with the display of Bhagwan Vishnu's devotion and healed Bhagwan Vishnu's eye. He also gave Bhagwan Vishnu a weapon called Sudarshan Charkra which was a very powerful weapon."
Samir asked in curiosity, "How did it look like and what were its features?"
Yam said with a glint of admiration in his eyes, "Its shape is that of a spinning disk with 108 sharp serrated edges, 10 million spikes protruding from it and a center as ferocious as thunderbolt. It can kill any enemy with just the will of its wielder. It has a unique connection to Bhagwan Vishnu and only follows his and his avatars' will. You can also think of it as galaxy spinning eternally on Bhagwan Vishnu's right index finger and being able to travel at very vast distance in a short amount of time. Just that it has very refined features as I've mentioned earlier."
Samir asked incredulously, "Is it the most powerful weapon?"
Yam answered, "No. It is not. Bhagwan Shiv's trident known as 'Trishool' is also on the same level as Sudarshan Chakra."
"You said that it was given to him by showing his devotion. But isn't he also on an equal footing as Bhagwan Shiv ?" Samir raised another question.
"The thing is, Bhagwan Shiv and Bhagwan Vishnu both respect each other as much a loyal devotee and they had shown this devotion of theirs on many occasions." Yam explained to Samir as plainly and simply as he could."
Hearing this Samir went into his inner mind to contemplate this matter once again.
After a long while of silence he mumbled to himself, "That's what ethics and morals used to be. The more I hear and think about it all, the more I am beginning to understand the reason why the Kaliyug is called the dark age."
Samir felt a rare spark of anger being ignited in his stomach. He took a long breathe in and then continued on with another round of his questions in an attempt to calm himself down.
He asked, "You have told me the story of first two avatars of Bhagwan Vishnu which avatar is next?"
Yam replied, "I have told you about the tales of first and second avatars which were Matsya avatar and Kurma avatar. The next avatar taken by Bhagwan Vishnu is Varaha avatar who had the head of a boar with the body of a human."