INDRA

Encyclopedia of Religion, INDRA, Vol.7, p.214

INDRA. In India the worship of the god Indra, king of the gods, warrior of the
gods, god of rain, begins properly in the Rgveda, circa 1200 BCE, but his broader
nature can be traced farther back into the proto-Indo-European world through his
connections with Zeus and Wotan. For although the Rgveda knows a sky father called
Dyaus-pitr, who is literally cognate with Zeus-pater and Jupiter, it is Indra who truly
fills the shoes of the Indo-European celestial sovereign: he wields the thunderbolt,
drinks the ambrosial soma to excess, bestows fertility upon human women (often by
sleeping with them himself), and leads his band of Maruts, martial storm gods, to win
victory for the conquering Indo-Aryans.

Encyclopedia of Religion, INDRA, Vol.7, p.214

In the Rgveda, Indra's family life is troubled in ways that remain unclear.
His birth, like that of many great warriors and heroes, is unnatural: kept against his will
inside his mother's womb for many years, he bursts forth out of her side and kills his
own father (Rgveda 4.18). He too is in turn challenged by his own son, whom he
apparently overcomes (Rgveda 10.28). But the hymns to Indra, who is after all the chief
god of the Rgveda (over a quarter of the hymns in the collection are addressed to him),
emphasize his heroic deeds. He is said to have created the universe by propping apart
heaven and earth (as other gods, notably Visnu and Varuna, are also said to have done)
and finding the sun, and to have freed the cows that had been penned up in a cave
(Rgveda 3.31). This last myth, which is perhaps the central myth of the Rgveda, has
meaning on several levels: it means what it says (that Indra helps the worshiper to
obtain cattle, as he is so often implored to do), and also that Indra found the sun and the
world of life and light and fertility in general, for all of which cows often serve as a
Vedic metaphor.

Encyclopedia of Religion, INDRA, Vol.7, p.214

It was Indra who, in the shape of a falcon or riding on a falcon, brought

down the soma plant from heaven, where it had been guarded by demons, to earth,
where it became accessible to men (Rgveda 4.26-27). Indra himself is the soma drinker
par excellence; when he gets drunk, as he is wont to do, he brags (Rgveda 10.119), and
the worshiper who invites Indra to share his soma also shares in the euphoria that soma
induces in both the human and the divine drinker (Rgveda 9.113). But Indra is a jealous
god—jealous, that is, of the soma, both for lofty reasons (like other great gods, he does
not wish to allow mortals to taste the fruit that will make them like unto gods) and for
petty reasons (he wants to keep all the soma for himself). His attempts to exclude the
Asvins from drinking the soma fail when they enlist the aid of the priest Dadhyañc, who
disguises himself with a horse's head and teaches them the secret of the soma (Rgveda
1.117.22).

Encyclopedia of Religion, INDRA, Vol.7, p.214

But Indra's principal function is to kill enemies—non-Aryan humans and

demons, who are often conflated. As the supreme god of the ksatriyas or class of royal
warriors, Indra is invoked as a destroyer of cities and destroyer of armies, as the staunch
ally of his generous worshipers, to whom Indra is in turn equally generous (Maghavan,
"the generous," is one of his most popular epithets). These enemies (of whom the most
famous is Vrtra) are often called Dasas or Dasyus, "slaves," and probably represent the
indigenous populations of the subcontinent that the Indo-Aryans subjugated (and whose
twin cities, Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, in the Indus Valley, may have been the citadels
that Indra claims to have devastated). But the Dasas are also frequently identified with
the asuras, or demonic enemies of the gods themselves. The battles thus take place
simultaneously on the human and the divine levels, and are both political and
cosmogonic.

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Indra's reputation begins to decline in the Brahmanas, about 900 BCE,

where his supremacy is preempted by Prajapati, the primordial creator. Indra still drinks
the soma, but now he becomes badly hung-over and has to be restored to health by the
worshiper. Similarly, the killing of Vrtra leaves Indra weakened and in need of
purification. In the epics, Indra is mocked for weaknesses associated with the phallic
powers that are his great glory in the Rgveda. His notorious womanizing leads, on one
occasion (when the sage Gautama catches Indra in bed with Ahalya, the sage's wife), to
Indra's castration; though his testicles are later replaced by those of a ram (Ramayana
1.47-48); in another version of this story, Indra is cursed to be covered with a thousand
yonis or vaginas, a curse which he turns to a boon by having the yonis changed into a
thousand eyes. When Indra's excesses weaken him, he becomes vulnerable in battle;
often he is overcome by demons and must enlist the aid of the now supreme sectarian
gods, Siva and Visnu, to restore his throne. Sometimes he sends one of his voluptuous
nymphs, the apsaras, to seduce ascetic demons who have amassed sufficient power,
through tapas ("meditative austerities"), to heat Indra's throne in heaven. And when the
demon Nahusa usurps Indra's throne and demands Indra's wife, Saci, the gods have to
perform a horse sacrifice to purify and strengthen Indra so that he can win back his
throne. Even then Indra must use a combination of seduction and deceit, rather than
pure strength, to gain his ends: Saci goads Nahusa into committing an act of hubris that
brings him down to a level on which he becomes vulnerable to Indra.

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Old Vedic gods never die; they just fade into new Hindu gods. Indra
remains a kind of figurehead in Hindu mythology, and the butt of many veiled anti-
Hindu jokes in Buddhist mythology. The positive aspects of his person are largely
transformed to Siva. Both Indra and Siva are associated with the Maruts or Rudras,
storm gods; both are said to have extra eyes (three, or a thousand) that they sprouted in
order to get a better look at a beautiful dancing apsaras; both are associated with the bull
and with the erect phallus; both are castrated; and both come into conflict with their
fathers-in-law. In addition to these themes, which are generally characteristic of fertility
gods, Indra and Siva share more specific mythological episodes: both of them seduce
the wives of brahman sages; both are faced with the problem of distributing (where it
will do the least harm) certain excessive and destructive forces that they amass; both are
associated with anti-Brahmanic, heterodox acts; and both lose their right to a share in
the sacrifice. And just as Indra beheads a brahman demon (Vrtra) whose head pursues
him until he is purified of this sin, so Siva, having beheaded Brahma, is plagued by
Brahma's skull until he is absolved in Ba-naras. Thus, although Indra comes into
conflict with the ascetic aspect of Siva, the erotic aspect of Siva found new uses for the
discarded myths of Indra.

Encyclopedia of Religion, INDRA, Vol.7, p.215

[See also Vedism and Brahmanism; Prajapati; and Siva. For further
discussion of Indra's Indo-European cognates, see Jupiter.]
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

For a detailed summary of the mythology of Indra, see pages 249-283 of

Sukumari Bhattacharji's rather undigested The Indian Theogony (Cambridge, 1970). For
a translation of a series of myths about Indra, and a detailed bibliography of secondary
literature, see pages 56-96 and 317-321 of my Hindu Myths (Harmondsworth, 1975).
For the sins of Indra, see Georges Dumézil's The Destiny of the Warrior (Chicago,
1970) and The Destiny of the King (Chicago, 1973), and my The Origins of Evil in
Hindu Mythology (Berkeley, 1976). For the relationship between Indra and Siva, see
my Siva: The Erotic Ascetic (Oxford, 1981), originally published as Asceticism and
Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva (1973).

WENDY DONIGER O'FLAHERTY