Timingila, the whale-swallower

The word

Timi, a whale. Gila, one who swallows.

The name explains itself once you split it. Timi is a whale, and gila is one who swallows. So a timingila is a whale-swallower: something in the sea so large that a whale is only a meal to it.

The epic never describes it more closely than that. It has no shape, no colour and no story of its own. The notes to the Critical Edition's translation call it a fish in one place and a mythical creature in another. What the text does with it is more interesting. It puts the timingila where it wants an ocean to feel deep and full.

The first ocean

Two sisters on their way to see a horse.

The timingila arrives early, in the first book. Kadru, mother of the snakes, and her sister Vinata, mother of Garuda, have made a bet on the colour of the tail of Ucchaihshrava, the horse that rose from the churning of the ocean. The loser will become the other's slave. Next morning they set out to look at the horse, and on the way they see "the deep and great ocean, the treasury of the waters, full of fish that swallow whales."

Two chapters later, Kadru praises Indra as everything in the world, and the ocean comes back with its creatures: "You are the great ocean and its waves, with whales, creatures that swallow whales, crocodiles and diverse other fish."

Arjuna's ocean

Like mountains under the water.

After years in heaven learning divine weapons, Arjuna asked Indra what fee he owed his teacher. Indra's fee was a fight. He named his enemies, the demons called the Nivatakavachas, who lived by the ocean in a place that was hard to reach. He gave Arjuna his own chariot, with Matali to drive it, and sent him off.

Arjuna later told his brothers what he saw on the way: "Then I beheld the terrible ocean, the eternal lord of the waters. Towering waves could be seen there, full of foam, dashing against each other and scattering, like moving mountains. … Timingilas, tortoises, whales and crocodiles could be seen, immersed in the water like mountains."

Garuda's flight

"Please travel slowly."

Before the war, the sage Narada tried to talk Duryodhana out of his stubbornness with the story of another stubborn man. The young sage Galava had insisted on paying his teacher Vishvamitra a fee. Vishvamitra, annoyed, asked for eight hundred white horses, each with one black ear. Galava had no idea where to find them, so his friend Garuda carried him across the world to look.

Galava did not enjoy the ride. The wind of Garuda's wings tore up trees and lifted the sea into the sky: "I can see fish, whale and timingilas, similar in their forms, churned up and also serpents, similar in forms to men." Deafened and blinded by it all, he begged the great bird to slow down.

Uluka's taunt

A warrior called a timingila.

On the eve of the war, Duryodhana sent Uluka to the Pandava camp with a message meant to sting. Uluka gave it to Yudhishthira, then turned to Arjuna. In Duryodhana's words, the Kaurava army was an ocean, and its warriors were the things that live in it:

"Swim across this deep ocean of men, using your arms. Sharadvata is a giant fish. Vivimshati is a school of fish. Brihadbala is a giant wave. Soumadatti is a timingila."

Sharadvata is Kripa. Soumadatti means "son of Somadatta", that is, Bhurishravas. Of all the warriors in that ocean, he was the one Duryodhana chose to call the whale-swallower.

A king named Timingila

Sahadeva conquered him in the south.

Not every timingila in the epic lives in the sea. Before Yudhishthira's great Rajasuya sacrifice, his four brothers went out to bring the four directions under him. Sahadeva went south. Among the places and rulers he conquered, the list names "the island known as Tamra, Mount Ramaka and King Timingila." That one line is all the chapter says about him.

A river full of them

A sage, a crow, and a court full of thieves.

The last timingila in this list is in a story Bhishma told Yudhishthira about how a king should guard his treasury. The sage Kalakavrikshiya went around the kingdom of Kosala with a crow in a cage. He told people the crow told him everything.

In truth he watched the king's men himself, with many helpers, and he found out which officers were stealing from the treasury. He named them, and said the crow had told him. That night, the guilty officers killed the crow.

The sage went to Kshemadarshina, the king of Kosala, and told him everything. He described the danger he had passed through as a river he had crossed, a river full of crocodiles and fish and timingilas. This time, the creatures in the water were the king's own men.

The word lives on

In the south, it now means whale.

The Sanskrit word did not stay in the epic. In Tamil, the everyday word for a whale is திமிங்கலம் (timingalam), and in Malayalam it is തിമിംഗലം (timingalam). So the whale-swallower has ended up as the name of the whale itself.

Where this comes from

This site follows the Critical Edition, the text rebuilt at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

The passages above are, in order: Adi Parva, chapters 19 and 21; Aranyaka Parva, chapter 166; Udyoga Parva, chapters 110 and 158; Sabha Parva, chapter 28; and Shanti Parva, chapter 83. The meaning of the word is from the translation's notes. These are the places where the translation or its notes name the timingila. It may hide in others, translated as a plain "whale".

Keep reading

Uluka's message came on the eve of eighteen days of fighting. Read what happened on each of them in the eighteen days of Kurukshetra. Or test yourself with twenty-five tough questions, the first of which is about the timingila.