The story explores the mythological significance of Garuda and Hanuman in Hinduism, highlighting their abilities to fly and their roles as divine messengers.
It draws parallels between Garuda and similar mythical birds from other cultures, such as the Simurgh and the Rukh, emphasizing the universal symbolism of birds as powerful and divine entities across various traditions.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Anurag Thakur has called Lord Hanuman the ‘first one to travel in space’ during an interaction with school students in Himachal Pradesh.
The minister also asked the students “to look beyond textbooks to connect with India’s traditions”.
In Hinduism, Hanuman is indeed capable of flying. “When we read the Ramayana, we see Hanuman jumping over the sea to reach Lanka. This story shows us that Hanuman can do things that seem impossible, like flying through the sky,” notes the website of Ramana Maharishi.
It also describes an equal of Hanuman in this respect: Garuda, the vahana or ‘vehicle’ of Lord Vishnu. “Considering how fast Lord Hanuman is, we should also think about Garuda from Hindu stories. He’s known for flying really fast through the sky.”
Interestingly, both Hanuman and Garuda are referred together by C Rajagopalachari in his version of the Ramayana.
Rajagopalachari describes the episode after Hanuman leaps into the sky to cross the 100 yojanas that lie between him and the island of Lanka, where Sita is imprisoned by Ravana.
“From now on, Hanumaan is the hero of the Ramayana. The devotees of Vishnu lovingly call him the ‘Junior Servant of Hari’. The Senior Servant is Garuda who is always with Vishnu in personal attendance.”
Even more interestingly, Garuda has counterparts in other cultures. Like Garuda, they are huge in size and may or may not be the first to have flown.
This article seeks to find common ground in the stories behind Garuda and these other similar birds.
In her 2023 paper, The Mythical Bird Garuda and His Independent and Contextual Appearances in Temple Sculptures of Kerala, Preeta Nayar explains that “Garuda was originally the sun conceived as a bird. Later, he got identified with the bird Garuda and subsequently, as the vahana of Vishnu.”
She adds that, “In the Kushana period, Garuda was represented as a complete bird but in later periods, he happened to be depicted in hybrid form, a human with sharp beak and two wings. In the early Gupta period, Garuda was sculptured with human body and prominent outspread wings. During the 8th /9th century CE, the bird form started disappearing and the human form became dominant. Garuda evolved further to a merely winged human or a complete human giving a suggestion of flight.”
Garuda finds mention in the Rigveda, the Mahabharata and the Puranas. In Garuda-the mount of Vishnu (2019), Monidipa Dey explains that “while the concept of vahana does not find any specific mentions in the Vedic literature, and the gods that are shown to ride chariots mostly have horses pulling them; interestingly however, sometimes the gods are conceived as animals themselves (theriomorphism), such as, a golden bird, a ram, a bull, etc. Perhaps these were the animistic remains from a totemistic state, which were gradually sublimated through further evolution of religious iconography.” She adds that associating animals as vahanas seem to be of a later development.
It is not surprising at all that Garuda shares counterparts.
In his 1896 work, The popular religion and folk-lore of Northern India, William Crooke explains it perfectly:
Garuda, another of these vehicles, is the wonder-working bird common to many mythologies—the Rukh of the Arabian Nights, the Eorosh of the Zend, the Simurgh of the Persians, the Anka of the Arabs, the Kargas of the Turks, the Kirni of the Japanese, the Dragon of China, the Norka of Russia, the Phœnix of classical fable, the Griffin of chivalry and of Temple Bar.
But why this commonality?
In Birds in Mythology (2019), Shay Cuperman explains the importance of birds to humans: “Rising above the earth and soaring through the skies, birds have been symbols of power and freedom throughout the ages. In many myths and legends, birds link the human world to the divine or supernatural realms that lie beyond ordinary experience.”
So, what then are the individual stories of the Simurgh, the Rukh and the Anka?
The Simurgh of pre-Islamic Persian (Zoroastrian) religion is based on a bird called the Saena, which is mentioned in the Avesta, the Zoroastrian holy book.
There is a link between this Saena and the Shyena of the Vedas.
“The concept of the divine bird or phoenix is not unique to the western traditions of Greece and Egypt,” Robert Cox writes in The Pillar of Celestial Fire: And the Lost Science of the Ancient Seers. “It is also tied deeply into the ancient Vedic wisdom. In the Vedic tradition, the divine hawk (shyena) is identified as Agni—the Divine Messenger.” In the Puranas, Shyena becomes Garuda. Both, Shyena and Garuda are associated with bringing nectar to earth from heaven.
Meanwhile, Saena in the Avesta roosts on the Vispô-bish tree and is linked to healing and medicine.
Later, during the Sassanid Empire (224 to 651 CE), the Saena of the Avesta becomes the Sênmurw of the Minooye Kherad, a Pahlavi text.
Finally, the Simurgh is mentioned in the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) by Ferdowsi.
“The Simurgh seems to have some connexion with the Hindu Garuda or Garula, the great enemy of serpents and snakes,” philologist Richard Morris wrote in 1891.
According to Croatian writer Hrvoje Milakovic, “While it shares traits with the phoenix in its symbolic association with fire and rebirth, the Simurgh also parallels creatures like the Russian Firebird and the Hindu Garuda in aspects of its narrative and symbolism.”
Similar to the Simurgh of the Persians is the Anqa or Anka of the Arabs.
In his Birds in legend, fable and folklore (1923), Ernest Ingersoll writes: “Now, Arabic authors of the Middle Ages had much to say of a mythical bird, “anka,” that lived 1700 years; and they explained that when a young anka grows up if it be a female the old female burns herself, and if it be a male the old male does so. This is very phenix-like, but the anka is distinguished by huge size, the Arabic writer Kazweenee, as quoted by Payne, describing the anka as the greatest of birds. “It carries off the elephant,” he says, “as the cat carries off the mouse”; and he relates that in consequence of its kidnapping a bride God, at the prayer of the prophet Handhallah, “banished it to an island in the circumambient ocean unvisited by men under the equinoctial line.”
This action of carrying off elephants is associated with yet another mythical bird, the Rukh.
The Rukh or the Roc bird is mentioned in the story of Sinbad the sailor, part of the kitāb ʾalf layla wa-layla (The Arabian Nights).
In his 2017 thesis, James Peter Hansford mentions that “The Rukh features in both the second and fifth voyages in the story cycle. The second voyage describes the Rukh as a giant bird big enough to carry an elephant within its talons and its enormous eggs the size of a house. The fifth voyage describes the Rukh from a desert island with giant eggs on its shores and flying birds that sank their ship by dropping large boulders carried in their talons.”
Hansford also addresses the probable inspiration behind the mythical Rukh: the now-extinct flightless elephant bird of Madagascar.
According to Hansford, during the early Cenozoic Period, the flying ancestors of elephant birds colonised the island of Madagascar. “By the late Quaternary these birds had evolved into a family of terrestrial ratites including species with enormous body sizes (>500 Kg) that produced the most massive eggs on record for any species at approximately 8-9 litres in volume. They persisted into the second millennium of the Common Era, co-occurring on the island with human settlers for several thousand years. By the time natural historians reached Madagascar from the Middle East and Europe, these avian megafauna had disappeared. Their eggshell and skeletal remains were found and traded across the Indian Ocean and are likely to have inspired literature and art pertaining to mythical creatures, namely Sinbad’s “Rukh”.”
He adds that “…it is interesting to discuss the possibility that stories of humans interacting with giant birds may have influenced concepts of mythical animals…”
Milakovic sums it up, “These parallels not only highlight the universal appeal of mythical birds but also illustrate how different cultures interpret similar concepts in distinct ways, influenced by their own histories and beliefs.”