Indra

The rivers had stopped. High on the mountain that cupped the world’s waters a serpent lay coiled, and while it held its grip the seven rivers stood locked behind stone, the fields cracked, and the cattle bawled at a sky that would not break. Into this the oldest hymns of India send their champion, and they feel no need to build suspense, because they already know the ending and have sung it a hundred different ways. A god takes up the thunderbolt and climbs toward the thing that is strangling the rain.

Indra is the loudest voice in the Rigveda. Roughly a quarter of its hymns belong to him alone, more than to any other god, and they praise him as a broad-shouldered, tawny-bearded drinker and fighter, the one who props apart heaven and earth and rides the storm at the head of the gods. He is weather and war at once. When the monsoon rolls in over the plains with its wall of black cloud and its lightning, that is Indra arriving, and the Vedic people who lived or died by that rain called on him before they called on anyone.

His beginnings are violent and a little comic. He is born, and almost before the story can settle he has seized the soma, the pressed golden drink of the gods, and swallowed it in enormous draughts. The soma is what makes him. It floods him with such size and force that his own parents, named in some hymns as Dyaus the sky and Prithvi the earth, recoil from him and are shoved apart, opening the gap between heaven and ground that the world needs in order to exist. The thunderbolt he carries, the vajra, is hammered out for him by Tvashtar, the smith of the gods, forged for the killing that is coming.

That killing sits at the center of everything. The serpent is Vritra, whose name means the enclosure or the obstruction, and he has wrapped himself around the mountain and swallowed the waters, holding them the way a fist holds sand. Indra drinks deep of the soma to steady himself and goes up to meet him. The two collide, and Indra brings the vajra down and splits the serpent open, cleaving the coils and shattering the rock, and the seven rivers rush out all at once and run down to the sea like cattle let loose to pasture. It reads as a creation as much as a victory. The world only works, the rain only falls, because the obstruction was cut and the water set free.

For this he was given a heaven. Indra rules Svarga, and its capital Amaravati, a city of pleasure high above the peaks where the air stays warm and thick with music. His four-tusked white elephant Airavata stands at the gate, an animal so vast it draws water up from the underworld through its trunk and breathes it into the clouds so that Indra can pour it down as rain. His halls are full of dancing apsaras and gandharvas with their instruments, and the dead heroes go there to be rewarded. He is shown as a golden or ruddy warrior weighed down with gold, crowned, the vajra in his fist, and in the later myths his skin is marked all over with eyes, a thousand of them.

Those eyes are a punishment, and they are where the story turns. The undefeated storm-king of the Vedas slowly curdles, across the centuries, into something smaller and less admirable. He grows proud, anxious about his throne, and helplessly ruled by his appetites. He disguises himself as the sage Gautama to sleep with the sage’s wife Ahalya, and when Gautama catches him he lays a curse on him, and the marks left on his body are later softened into a thousand eyes, so that the king of the gods walks about wearing the sign of what he did. He earns the name Sahasraksha, the thousand-eyed, and it is not a compliment.

The humblings pile up after that. When the cowherds of Vrindavan stop making their offerings to him, Indra sends a storm to drown them in his fury, and the boy Krishna simply lifts the whole of Mount Govardhana on one finger and holds it over the village like a roof until Indra’s rage burns out and he backs down, outmatched by a child who is a god in disguise. In the Ramayana he is beaten in open battle and dragged off as a prisoner by Ravana’s son Meghanada, who takes the trophy-name Indrajit, the conqueror of Indra. This is the same god who cut Vritra in half. He is a king who spends much of his later career afraid.

His powers were always the powers of the sky and the sword. He commands the rain and the thunder, hurls the vajra that never misses, wins battles for whoever holds his favor, and grants the fertility that follows water onto the land. He is the guardian of order, the one who leads the shining devas against the asuras in the war that has no end. But his weaknesses were built into him from the first cup of soma. The appetite that made him mighty made him greedy and rash, quick to drink, quick to lust, quick to panic, and against a true superior he folds. As Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma climbed to the top of the Hindu imagination, Indra was demoted beneath them, no longer the highest god but an officer of the middle heavens, a title more than a terror.

He never quite fades. The farmers still want their rain, and the thunder still rolls in off the mountains carrying his name. But the figure who began as the fearless breaker of the drought ends as a warning, proof that even the god who freed the waters could be brought down by the one thing he could never put down, which was himself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Indra in Hindu mythology?

Indra is the king of the devas and the god of storms, thunder, rain, and war in Hindu and earlier Vedic mythology. He rules the heaven called Svarga and is the most frequently praised deity in the Rigveda, invoked for rain, victory, and prosperity. His defining deed is slaying the serpent Vritra to release the world’s waters.

What is Indra’s weapon?

Indra’s weapon is the vajra, a thunderbolt forged for him by the divine craftsman Tvashtar. He used it to kill the drought-serpent Vritra, splitting the serpent open and shattering the mountain that held back the rivers. The vajra is described as a weapon that never misses its mark.

Why did Indra kill Vritra?

Indra killed Vritra because the serpent had coiled around a mountain and trapped the seven rivers, causing drought across the world. After drinking deeply of the sacred soma to strengthen himself, Indra struck Vritra with the vajra and released the waters, which rushed out to bring rain and life to the land. The act is celebrated in the Rigveda as both a victory and a kind of creation.

Why does Indra have a thousand eyes?

Indra is said to have a thousand eyes as the result of a curse for seducing Ahalya, the wife of the sage Gautama, while disguised as her husband. When Gautama discovered the deception he cursed Indra, and the shameful marks left on his body were later reinterpreted as a thousand eyes. This gave Indra the epithet Sahasraksha, meaning “the thousand-eyed.”

Why did Indra lose his importance among the Hindu gods?

Indra declined in status as the gods Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma rose to supremacy in later Hinduism, leaving him a ruler of the lesser heavens rather than the highest god. His character also changed, from the fearless Vedic warrior into a proud, insecure figure who is humbled by Krishna at Mount Govardhana and defeated in battle by the demon Indrajit. He remained the god of rain and thunder but lost his place at the top of the pantheon.

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