The Missiles Of Zeus And Indra

After Herodotus had visited Egypt in the fifth century B.C., he was convinced that it was from the Egyptians that the Greeks had obtained their notions and beliefs of the gods; writing for his countrymen, he employed the names of Greek gods to describe the comparable Egyptian deities.

His conviction of the Egyptian origin of Greek theology stemmed not only from comparable attributes and meanings of the gods’ names, but also (and mostly) from similarities in the tales concerning them. Of these, one uncanny parallel certainly must have struck him as no mere coincidence: it was the tale of the castration of one god by another in a struggle for supremacy.

The Greek sources from which Herodotus could have drawn are fortunately, still available: various literary works, such as Homer’s Iliad; the Odes of Pindar of Thebes, written and well known just before Herodotus’ time; and first and foremost, the Theogony (“Divine Genealogy”) by Hesiod, a native of Askara in central Greece who composed this work and another (Works and Days) in the eighth century B.C.

A poet, Hesiod chose to attribute the writing of the Theogony to the Muses, goddesses of music, literature, and art, who, he wrote, encouraged him “to celebrate in song” the histories “of the revered race of gods, from the beginning . . . and then to chant of the race of men and strong giants; and so gladden the heart of Zeus within Olympus.” This all happened when he was “shepherding his lambs” one day near the Holy Mountain which was their abode.

In spite of this pastoral introduction, the tale of the gods as revealed to Hesiod was mostly one of passion, revolt, cunning, and mutilation; as well as of struggle and global wars. In spite of all the hymnal glorification of Zeus, there is no apparent attempt to cover up the chain of bloody violence that had led to his supremacy.

Whatever the Muses sang of, Hesiod wrote down; and “these things did sing the Muses, nine daughters begotten of Zeus”: Verily, at first Chaos came to be, and next the wide-bosomed Gaea . . . And dim Tartarus, in the depths of wide-pathed Earth, and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods . . . From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Nyx; And of Nyx were born Aether and Hemera.

This first group of celestial gods was completed when Gaea (“Earth”) brought forth Uranus (“Starry Heaven”) and then espoused her own firstborn son so that he might be included in the First Dynasty of the gods. Besides Uranus, and soon after he was born, Gaea also gave birth to his graceful sister, Uraea, and to “Pontus, the fruitless Deep with his raging swell.” Then the next generation of gods were bom—offspring of Gaea’s mating with Uranus: Afterwards she lay with Uranus, and bare deep-swirling Oceanus; Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus; Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne: And gold-crowned Phoebe, and lovely Thetys. After them was born Cronos, the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children.

In spite of the fact that these twelve were offspring of the mating of a son with his own mother, the children—six males, six females—were worthy of their divine origins. But as Uranus got lustier and lustier, the offspring that followed—though formidable in might—displayed various deformities. First of the “monsters” to be born were the three Cyclopes, Brontes (“The Thunderer”), Steropes (“The Maker of Lightning”), and Arges (“Who Makes Radiation”); “in all else they were like the gods, but one eye only was set in the midst of their foreheads: and they were named ‘Orbeyed’ (Cyclopes) because one orbed eye was set in their foreheads.” “And again three more sons were born of Gaea and Uranus, great and valiant beyond telling: Cottus and Briareos and Gyes, audacious children.” Of giant size, the three were called Hekatoncheires (“The Hundred-Armed”): “From their shoulders sprang an hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads upon his shoulders.”

“And Cronos hated his lusty sire,” Hesiod wrote; but “Uranus rejoiced in his evil doing.”

It was then that Gaea “shaped a great sickle and told her plan to her dear sons,” whereby their “sinful father” would be punished for his “vile outrages”: to cut off the genitals of Uranus and put an end to his sexual drives. But “fear seized them all”; and only “great Cronos, the wily, took courage.” And so it was that Gaea gave Cronos the sickle she had made of gray Hint and hid him “in an ambush” in her quarters, which were by the Mediterranean Sea. And Uranus came at nighttime, longing for love; and he lay about Gaea, spreading himself upon her. Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand to grasp; and in his right hand he held the great long sickle with jagged teeth. Swiftly, he cut off his own father’s genitals, and cast them away, to fall behind him . . . into the surging sea.

The deed was done, but the castration of Uranus did not completely terminate his line of offspring. As his blood gushed forth, some of the blood drops impregnated Gaea, and she conceived and bore “the strong Erinyes” (female Furies of vengeance) “and the great Gigantes with gleaming armor, holding long spears in their hands; and the Nymphs whom they call Meliae [’the Nymphs of the ash tree’].” Of the castrated genitals, leaving a trail of foam as the surging sea carried them to the island of Cyprus, “there came forth an awful and lovely goddess . . . gods and men call her Aphrodite [‘She of the Foam’].”

The incapacitated Uranus called out to the monster-gods for vengeance. His own children, he cried out, had become Titans, Strainers who had “strained and did presumptuously the dreadful deed”; now the other gods had to make sure “that vengeance for it would afterwards come.” The frightened Cronos then imprisoned the Cyclopes and the other monstrous giants far away, so that none would answer the call of Uranus. All along, while Uranus was busy bringing forth his own offspring, the other gods were also proliferating; their children bore names indicating their attributes—by and large benevolent. Now, after the evil deed, the goddess Nyx responded to his call by bringing forth the deities of evil: “She bare the Destinies and the ruthless avenging Fates: Clotho [‘The Spinner’] and Lachesis [‘The Disposer of Lots’] and Atropos [‘Inevitable’]. . . . She bare Doom and Black Fate and Death . . . and Blame and Painful Woe . . . Famine and Sorrows.” And she also brought into the world “Deceit and Strife … as also Fighting, Battles, Murders, Killings, Quarrels, Lying Words, Disputes, Lawlessness and Ruin.” Lastly there was borne by Nyx Nemesis (“Retribution”). The call of Uranus has been answered: fighting, battles, and war came to be among the gods.

It was into this dangerous world that the Titans were bringing forth the third generation of the gods. Fearful of retribution, they kept closely to each other, five of the six brothers espousing five of their own six sisters. Of these divine brother-sister couples, most important was that of Cronos and Rhea, for it was Cronos, by reason of his bold deed, who had assumed the leadership among the gods. Of this union, Rhea gave birth to three daughters and three sons: Hestia, Demeter, and Hera: and Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. No sooner had one of these children been bom than “the great Cronos swallowed each . . . intent that no other of the proud Sons of Heaven should hold kingly office among the deathless gods.” The reason for eliminating his own offspring by swallowing them was a prophecy he had learned of, that “strong though he was, he was destined to be overcome by his own son”: Fate was to repeat unto Cronos that which he had done unto his father. But Fate could not be evaded. Wisened to the tricks of Cronos, Rhea hid her last-born son Zeus on the island of Crete. To Cronos she gave instead of the baby “a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes.” Not realizing the deception, Cronos swallowed the stone, thinking it was the baby Zeus. Soon thereafter he began vomiting, disgorging one by one all the children he had previously swallowed.

“As the years rolled on, the strength and glorious limbs of the prince [Zeus] increased quickly.” For a while, as a worthy grandson of the lusty Uranus, Zeus chased lovely goddesses, often getting into trouble with their companion gods. But then he turned his mind to affairs of state. For ten years a war had been raging between the older Titans, “the lordly Titans from high Mount Othyres” (which was their abode), and the younger gods “whom rich-haired Rhea bare in union with Cronos” and who settled on the opposite Mount Olympus. “With bitter wrath they were fighting continually with one another at that time for ten full years, and the hard strife had no close or end for either side, and the issue of war hung evenly balanced.”

Was this fighting merely the culmination of deteriorating relations between neighboring godly colonies, an outbreak of rivalry between intermingled and unfaithful gods and goddesses (where mothers slept with their sons, and uncles impregnated their nieces), or the first instance of the everlasting rebellion of the young against the old regime? The Theogony does not provide a clear answer, but later Greek legends and plays suggest that all these motives combined to create a prolonged and “stubborn war” between the younger and the older gods. It was this ongoing war that was seen by Zeus as his chance to seize the lordship over the gods and thereby—knowingly or unknowingly—fulfill the destiny to which his father Cronos had been fated, by deposing him. As his first step Zeus “set free from their deadly bonds the brothers of his father, sons of Uranus, whom his father in his foolishness had bound.” In gratitude, the three Cyclopes gave him the divine weapons Gaea had hidden away from Uranus: “The Thunder, and the Radiating Thunderbolt and the Lightning.” They also gave Hades a magic helmet, which made its wearer invisible; and Poseidon received a magical trident, which could make the earth and sea shake.

To refresh the Hekatoncheires after their long captivity and return their vigor to them, Zeus provided the trio with “nectar and ambrosia, the same that the gods cat”: then he addressed them and said:

Hear me, O bright children of Uranus and Gaea, that I may say what my heart within bids me. A long while now have we, who are sprung from Cronos, and the Titan gods, fought with each other every day, to get victory and to prevail. Would you now show your great might and strength. and face the Titans in the bitter strife? And Cottus, one of the Hundred-Armed, answered him and said: “Divine one, you speak that which we know well . . .

through your devising we are come back from the murky gloom and from our merciless bonds. And so now, with fixed purpose and deliberate counsel, we will aid your power in the dreadful strife, and fight against the Titans in hard battle.” So “all that were bom of Cronos, together with those dreaded mighty ones of overwhelming strength whom Zeus brought up to light. . . they all, both male and female, stirred up the hated battle that day.” Arrayed against these Olympians were the older Titans, who also “eagerly strengthened their ranks.” As the battle was joined it ranged all over the Earth and in the skies:

The boundless sea rang terribly around. and the earth crashed loudly; Wide heaven was shaken and groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundations under the charge of the undying gods. From the deep sound of the gods’ feet, and the fearful onset of their hard missiles, the heavy quaking reached even far Tartarus. In a verse reminiscent of the Dead Sea Scroll text, the Theogony recalled the war cries of the battling gods: Thus, then, they launched their grievous bolts at one another;

And the cry of both armies as they shouted reached to the starry heaven as they clashed with a great battle-cry. Zeus himself was fighting with all his might, using his Divine Weapons to the utmost. “From the skies, opposite Mount Olympus, he came forthwith, hurling his lightning. The bolts flew thick and fast from his strong hand, Thunder and Lightning together, whirling as an awesome flame. The fertile earth crashed around in burning, and the vast wood crackled aloud with fire all about. All the land seethed, as did the sweetwater streams and the salty sea.”

Then Zeus hurled a Thunder-Stone (Fig. 13) against Mount Othyres; it was, indeed, nothing short of an atomic explosion:

Fig. 13 The hot vapor lapped around the Titans. of Gaea born; Flame unspeakable rose bright to the upper air. The Flashing glare of the Thunder-Stone, its lightning, blinded their eyes— so strong it was. Astounding heat seized Chaos . . . It seemed as if Earth and wide Heaven above had come together; A mighty crash, as though Earth was hurled to ruin.

‘“So great a crash was there while the gods clashed together in strife.”

In addition to the awesome sound, the blinding Hash, and the extreme heat, the hurling of the Thunder-Stone also created an immense wind storm: Also were the winds brought rumbling, earthquake and duststorm, thunder and lightning.

All this did the Thunder-Stone of great Zeus bring about. And when the two contending camps heard and saw what had happened, “an horrible uproar of terrible strife arose; mighty deeds were shown; and the battle inclined.” The fighting was abating; for the gods had the upper hand over the Titans.

“Insatiated for war.” the three Cyclopes set upon the Titans, overpowering them with hand-held missiles. “They bound them in bitter chains.” and hurled them into captivity to far Tartarus. “There, by the counsel of Zeus who rides the clouds, the Titan gods are hidden under misty gloom, in a dank place at the ends of huge Earth.” The three Cyclopes stayed there, too, as “trusty warders of Zeus,” to watch over the imprisoned Titans.

As Zeus was about to claim “the aegis.” the suzerainty over all the gods, a sudden challenger appeared on the scene. For, “when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, great Gaea bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, with the aid of golden Aphrodite.” Typhoeus (“Typhon”) was a real monster: “Strength was with his hands in all that he did, and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew an hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues.

From under the brows of his eyes, in his marvellous heads, fire flashed; and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads, which uttered incredible sounds”: the sound of a man as he speaks, and the sound of a bull, and that of a lion, and the sound of a puppy. (According to Pindar and Aeschylus, Typhon was gigantic in height, “and his head reached to the stars.”)

“Truly a thing past help would have happened on that day,” the Muses revealed to Hesiod; it was almost inevitable that Typhoeus “would have come to reign over mortals and immortals.” But Zeus was quick to perceive the danger and lost no time in attacking him.

The series of battles that ensued were no less awesome than the fighting between the gods and the Titans, for the Snake-God Typhon was equipped with wings and could fly about just as Zeus (Fig. 14). “Zeus thundered hard and mightily, and the earth around resounded terribly, as did the wide heaven above and the sea and the watery streams, even the nether parts of the Earth.” Divine Weapons were again employed—by both combatants:

Fig, 14

Through the two of them, through the thunder and lightning. heat engulfed the dark-blue seas; And through the fire from the Monster, and the scorching winds and blazing Thunderbolt, the whole Earth seethed, and sky and sea. Great waves raged along the beaches . . . And there arose an endless shaking. In the Lower World, “Hades trembled where he ruled”: tremble did the Titans imprisoned at the ends of earth. Chasing each other in the skies and over land, Zeus managed to be the first to achieve a direct hit with his “lurid Thunderbolt.” The bolt “burned all the marvelous heads of the monster, all that were around him”; and Typhoeus crashed down to earth in his marvelous contraption:

When Zeus had vanquished h i m and lashed him with his strokes, Typhoeus was hurled down a maimed wreck. The huge earth groaned. A flame shot forth from the stricken lord in the dim, rugged, secluded valley of the Mount. when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor, melting as tin melts when heated by man’s art . . . In the glow of a blazing fire did the earth melt down.

In spite of the crash and the tremendous impact of Typhon’s vehicle, the god himself remained alive. According to the Theogony, Zeus cast him, too, “into wide Tartarus.” With this victory his reign was secure; and he turned to the important business of procreation, bringing forth progeny by wives and concubines alike. Though the Theogony described only one battle between Zeus and Typhon, the other Greek writings assert that that was the final battle, preceded by several others in which Zeus was the first one to be hurt. Initally Zeus fought with Typhon at close quarters, using the special sickle his mother had given him for the “evil deed,” for it was his purpose also to castrate Typhon. But Typhon enmeshed Zeus in his net. wrested his sickle away, and with it cut out the sinews of Zeus’ hands and feet. He then deposited the helpless Zeus, his sinews, and his weapons in a cave. But the gods Aegipan and Hermes found the cave, resurrected Zeus by restoring his sinews, and returned his weapons to him. Zeus then escaped and flew back “in a Winged Chariot” to Olympus, where he acquired a new supply of bolts for his Thunderer. With these Zeus renewed the attack on Typhon, driving him to Mount Nyssa, where the Fates tricked Typhon into eating the food of mortal men; whereupon he was weakened instead of being strengthened. The renewed fighting began in the skies over Mount Haemus in Thrace, continued over Mount Etna in Sicily, and ended over Mount Casius on the Asiatic coast of the eastern Mediterranean. There Zeus, using his Thunderbolt, shot Typhon down from the skies. The similarity between the battles, the weapons used, the locations, as well as the tales of castration, mutilation, and resurrection—all in the course of a struggle for succession—convinced

Herodotus (and other Greek classical historians) that the Greeks had borrowed their theogony from the Egyptians. Aegipan stood for the African Ram God of Egypt, and Hermes paralleled the god Thoth. Hesiod himself reported that when Zeus came unto the mortal beauty Alcmena so that she might bear him the heroic Heracles, he slipped at night from Mount Olympus and went to the land of Typhaonion, resting there atop the Phikion (The Sphinx Mountain).

“The deadly Sphinx that destroyed the Cadmeans” (“The Ancients”), which featured in the doings of Hera, the official spouse of Zeus, was also connected in these legends with Typhon and his domain. And Apollodorus reported that when Typhon was born and grew to an incredible size, the gods rushed to Egypt to take a look at the awesome monster.

Most scholars have held that Mount Casius, the site of the final battle between Zeus and Typhon, was located near the mouth of the Orontes river in today’s Syria. But as Otto Eissfeldt has shown in a major study (Baal Zaphon, Zeus Kasios und der Durchgang der Israelilen durches Meer), there was another mount called by that name in antiquity—a promontory on the Serbonic Sealet that juts out of the Sinai peninsula into the Mediterranean Sea. He suggested that that was the mount referred to in the legends. Once again, all one had to do was to trust the information given to Herodotus in Egypt. Describing the land route from Phoenicia to Egypt via Philistia (History, Book III, 5), he wrote that the Asian lands ’ ’extend to Lake Serbonis, near the place where Mount Casius juts out into the sea. Egypt begins at Lake Serbonis, where the tale goes that Typhon hid himself."

Once again, Greek and Egyptian tales converged, with the Sinai peninsula as the climax.

Notwithstanding the many connecting threads the ancient Greeks had found between their theogony and that of Egypt, it was much farther away—in India—that nineteenth-century European scholars have found even more amazing parallels. No sooner had Sanskrit, the language of ancient India, been mastered at the end of the eighteenth century than Europe began to be enchanted by translations of hitherto unknown writings. At first a field dominated by the British, the study of Sanskrit literature, philosophy, and mythology was by the mid-nineteenth century a favorite of German scholars, poets, and intellectuals, for Sanskrit turned out to be a mother tongue of the Indo-European languages (to which German belonged), and its bearers to India were migrants from the shores of the Caspian Sea—“Aryans,” as the Germans believed their ancestors, too, to have been.

Central to this literature were the Vedas, sacred scriptures believed by Hindu tradition to be “not of human origin,” having been composed by the gods themselves in a previous age. They were brought to the Indian subcontinent by the Aryan migrants sometime in the second millennium B.C., as oral traditions. But as time went on, more and more of the original 100,000 verses were lost; so, circa 200 B.C., a sage wrote down the remaining verses, dividing them into four parts: the Rig-Veda (the “Veda of Verses”), which is made up of ten books; the Sama-Veda (the “Chanted Vedas”); the Yajur-Veda (mostly sacrificial prayers); and the Atharva-Veda (spells and incantations).

In time, the various components of the Vedas and the auxiliary literature that stemmed from them (the Mantras, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads) were augmented by the non-Vedic Puranas (“Ancient Writings”). Together with the great epic tales of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, they make up the sources of the Aryan and Hindu tales of Heaven and Earth, gods and heroes. Because of the long oral interval, the length and profusion of texts finally written down over many centuries, the many names, generic terms, and epithets employed for the deities interchangeably—and the fact that many of these original names and terms were non-Aryan after all—consistency and precision are not hallmarks of this Sanskrit literature. Yet some facts and events emerge as basic tenets of the Aryan-Hindu legacy. In the beginning, these sources relate, there were only the celestial bodies, “The Primeval Ones Who Flow.” There was an upheaval in the heavens, and “The Dragon” was split in two by the “Flowing One of Storms.’’ Calling the two parts by names of nonAryan origin, the tales assert that Rehu, the upper part of the destroyed planet, unceasingly traverses the heavens in search of vengeance; the lower part, Ketu (“The Cut-off One”), has joined the “Primeval Ones” in their “flowing” (orbits). Many Ages then passed, and a dynasty of Gods of Heaven and Earth made its appearance. The heavenly Mar-Ishi, who headed them, had seven (or ten) children by his consort Prit-Hivi (“The Broad One”), who personified the Earth. One of them, Kas-Yapa (“He of the Throne”), made himself chief of the Devas (“The Shiny Ones”), seizing the title Dyaus-Pitar (“Sky Father”)—the undoubted source of the Greek title-name Zeus (“Dyaus”) and its Roman parallel Jupiter (“Dyauspiter”).

Quite prolific, Kasyapa begot many gods, giants, and monstrous offspring by diverse wives and concubines. Most prominent, and individually known and revered since Vedic times, were the Adityas—some born to Kasyapa by his consort Aditi (“Boundless”). Numbering seven at first, they were Vishnu, Varuna, Mitra, Rudra, Pushan, Tvashtri, and Indra. Then the Aditis were joined by Agni, a son of Kasyapa either by his spouse Aditi or (as some texts suggest) by his own mother Prithivi. As in the Greek Olympian circle, the number of the Aditis finally rose to twelve. Among them were Bhaga, who is believed by scholars to have become the supreme Slavic god Bogh. The last one to be born by Aditi—though whether he was fathered by Kasyapa was uncertain—was Surya. Tvashtri (“Fashioner”), in his role as “All-Accomplishing,” the artisan of the gods, provided them with aerial cars and magical weapons. From a blazing celestial metal he fashioned a discus for Vishnu, a trident for Rudra, a “fire weapon” for Agni, a “bolthurling Thunderer” for Indra, and a “flying mace” for Surya. In ancient Hindu depictions, all these weapons appeared as hand-held missiles of diverse shapes (Fig. 15). In addition, the gods acquired other weapons from Tvashtri’s assistants; Indra, for example, obtained an “aerial net” with which he could snare his foes during sky battles. Fig. 15

The celestial chariots or “aerial cars” were invariably described as bright and radiant, made of or plated with gold. India’s Vimana (aerial car) had lights shining at its sides and moved “swifter than thought,” traversing rapidly vast distances. Its unseen steeds were “Sun-eyed,” emitting a reddish hue, but also changing colors. In other instances the aerial cars of the gods were described as multitiered; sometimes they could not only fly in the air, but also travel under water. In the epic tale of the Mahabharata, the arrival of the gods for a wedding feast in a fleet of aerial cars is described thus (we follow the translation of R. Dutt in Mahabharata, The Epic of Ancient India):

The gods, in cloud-borne chariots, came to view the scene so fair: Bright Adityas in their splendor, Maruts in the moving air; Winged Suparnas, scaly Nagas, Deva Rishies pure and high, For their music famed, Gandharvas; (and) fair Apsaras of the sky. . . . Bright celestial cars in concourse sailed upon the cloudless sky. The texts also speak of the Ashvins (“Drivers”), gods who specialized in piloting aerial chariots. “Swift as young falcons,” they were “the best of charioteers who reach the heavens,” always piloting their craft in pairs, accompanied by a navigator. Their vehicles, which sometimes appeared in groups, were golden-made, “bright and radiant . . . with easy seat and lightly rolling.” They were constructed on a triple principle, having three levels, three seats, three supporting poles, and three rotating wheels. “That chariot of yours,” Hymn 22 of Book VIII of the Rig-Veda said in praise of the Ashvins, “hath a triple seat and reins of gold—the famous car that traverses Heaven and Earth.” The rotating wheels, it appears, served diverse functions: one to raise the craft, another to give it direction, the third to speed it along: “One of your chariot’s wheels is moving swiftly around; one speeds for you its onward course.” As in the Greek tales, so did the gods of the Vedas display little morality or restraint in sexual matters—sometimes getting away with it, sometimes not, as when the indignant Adityas selected Rudra (“The Three-Eyed”) to kill their grandfather Dyaus for having violated their sister Ushas. (Dyaus, wounded, saved his life by fleeing to a distant celestial body.) Also as in the Greek tales, so did the gods according to Hindu lore mingle, in later times, in the loves and wars of mortal kings and heroes. In these instances the aerial vehicles of the gods played roles even greater than their weapons. Thus, when one hero drowned, the Ashvins appeared in a fleet of three aerial chariots, “self-activated watertight ships which traverse the air,” dived into the ocean, retrieved the hero from the watery depths, and “conveyed him over land, beyond the liquid ocean.” And then there was the tale of Yayati, a king who married the daughter of a god. When the couple bore children, the happy grandfather gave the king “a highly effulgent golden celestial chariot, which could go everywhere without interruption.” Without losing time, “Yayati ascended the chariot and, irrepressible in battle, within six nights conquered the entire Earth.” As in the Iliad, so did Hindu traditions tell of wars of men and gods over beautiful heroines. Best known of these tales is the Ramayana, the long epic tale of Rama the prince whose beautiful wife was abducted by the king of Lanka (the island of Ceylon, off India). Among the gods who turned out to help Rama was Hanuman, the god with a monkey face, who conducted aerial battles with the winged Garuda (Fig. 16), one of the monstrous offspring of Fig. 16

Kasyapa. In another instance, Sukra, a god “sullied by immorality,” abducted Tara, the beautiful wife of Indra’s charioteer. “The Illustrious Rudra” and other gods then came to the aid of the aggrieved husband. There ensued “a terrible battle, destructive of gods and demons, on account of Tara.” In spite of their awesome weapons, the gods were bested and had to seek refuge with “the Prime Deity.” Thereupon the grandfather of the gods himself came to Earth, and put an end to the fighting by returning Tara to her husband.

Then Tara gave birth to a son “whose beauty overclouded the celestials …. Filled with suspicion, the gods demanded to know who the true father was: the lawful husband or the abductor-god.” She proclaimed that the boy was the son of Soma, “Celestial Immortality”; and she named him Budah. But all that was in times yet to come; in the olden days the gods battled among themselves for more important causes: supremacy and rule over the Earth and its resources. With so many offspring of Kasyapa by diverse wives and concubines, as well as the descendants of the other olden gods, conflict soon became inevitable. The dominance of the Adityas was especially resented by the Asuras, elder gods whose mothers bore them to Kasyapa before the Adityas were born. Bearing a non-Aryan name of a clear Near Eastern origin (being akin to names of the supreme gods of Assyria. Babylon, and Egypt—Ashur, Asar, Osiris), they eventually assumed in the Hindu traditions the role of the evil gods, the “demons.” Jealousy, rivalry, and other causes of friction finally led to war when the Earth, “which at first produced food without cultivation,” succumbed to a global famine. The gods, the texts reveal, sustained their immortality by drinking Soma, an ambrosiac that was brought down to Earth from the Celestial Abode by an eagle and was drunk mixed with milk. The “kine” (“cow-cattle”) of the gods also provided the gods’ favored “sacrifices” of roasted meat. But a time came when all these necessities became scarcer and scarcer. The Satapatha Brahmana describes the events that followed: The gods and the Asuras, both sprung from the Father of Gods and Men, were contending for superiority. The gods vanquished the Asuras; yet afterwards, these once more harassed them. . . .

The gods and the Asuras, both of them sprung from the Father of Gods and Men, were [again] contending for superiority. This time, the gods were worsted. And the Asuras thought: “To us alone assuredly belongs this world!”

They thereupon said: “Well, then, let us divide this world between ourselves; and having divided it, let us subsist thereon.” Accordingly, they set about dividing it from west to east. Hearing this, the defeated Adityas went to plead for a share in Earth’s resources: When they heard this, the gods said: “The Asuras are actually dividing this Earth! Come, let us go where the Asuras are dividing it; for what would become of us if we were to get no share of Earth?”

Placing Vishnu at their head, they went to the Asuras. Haughtily the Asuras offered to give the Adityas only as much of Earth as Vishnu could lie upon. . . . But the gods used a subterfuge and placed Vishnu in an “enclosure” that could “walk in three directions.” thereby regaining three of the Earth’s four regions. The outsmarted Asuras then attacked from the south; and the gods asked Agni “how they could vanquish the Asuras forever.” Agni suggested a pincer maneuver: while the gods attack from their regions, “I will go round to the northern side, and you will shut them in from here; and whilst shutting them in, we will put them down.” Having so vanquished the Asuras, the Satapatha Brahmana records, “the gods were anxious as to how they might replenish the sacrifices”; accordingly, many of the battle segments of the ancient Hindu writings deal with the recapture of the kine and the resupply of the Soma beverage.

These wars were fought on land, in the air, and beneath the seas. The Asuras, according to the Mahabharata, made for themselves three metal fortresses in the skies, from which they attacked the three regions of the Earth. Their allies in the war with the gods could become invisible and used invisible weapons; and others fought from a city beneath the sea, which they had captured from the gods. One who excelled in these battles was Indra (“Storm”). On land he smote ninety-nine strongholds of the Asuras, killing great numbers of their armed followers. In the skies he fought from his aerial car the Asuras, who were hiding in their “cloud fortresses.”

Hymns in the Rig-Veda list groups of gods as well as individual deities defeated by Indra (we follow the translation by R. T. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rig-Veda): Thou slewest with thy bolt the Sasyu . . . Far from the floor of Heaven in all directions, the ancient riteless ones fled to destruction . . . The Dasyu thou hast burned from the heavens. They met in fight the army of the blameless, then the Navagvas put forth all their power. Like emasculates contending with men they fled, by steep paths from Indra they scattered. Indra broke through Ilibsa’s strong castles, and Sushna with his horn he cut to pieces . . . Thou slewest thy fighting foe with thy Thunder . . . Fierce on his enemies fell Indra’s weapon. with his sharp rushing Thunderbolt he rent their towns to pieces.

Thou goest forth from fight to fight intrepidly, destroying castle after castle with thy strength. Thou Indra, with thy friend who makes the foe bow down, slowest from far away the guileful Namuchi. Thou hast struck down in death Karanja, Parnaya . . . Thou hast destroyed the hundred towns of Vangrida. The ridges of the lofty heaven thou madest shake when thou, daring, by thyself smote Sambara. Defeating the gods’ enemies in groups as well as in single combat, and making them “flee to destruction,” Indra turned his efforts to the freeing of the kine. The “demons” hid them inside a mountain, guarded by Vala (“Encircler”); Indra, aided by the Angirases, young gods who could emit divine flames, smashed into the fortified hideaway and freed the kine. (Some scholars, as J. Herbert in Hindu Mythology, hold that what Indra released or retrieved was a Divine Ray, not cows, for the Sanskrit word go has both meanings.)

When these wars of the gods began, the Adityas named Agni (“Agile”) as Hotri, their “Chief of Office.” As the wars progressed—some texts suggest for well over a thousand yearsVishnu (“Active”) was made the Chief. But when the fighting was over, Indra, having contributed so much to the victory, claimed the supremacy. As in the Greek Theogony, one of his first acts to establish his claim was to slay his own father. The Rig-Veda (Book iv: 18, 12) asks Indra rhetorically: “Indra, who made thy mothera widow?” The answer follows also as a question: “What god was present in the fray, when thou didst slay thy father, seizing him by the foot?”

For this crime Indra was excluded by the gods from the drinking of the Soma, thereby endangering his continued immortality. They “ascended up to Heaven,” leaving Indra with the kine he had retrieved. But “he went up after them, with the raised Thunderweapon,” ascending from the northern place of the gods.

Fearing his weapon, the gods shouted: “Do not hurl!” and agreed to let Indra share once again in the divine nourishments. Indra’s seizing of the leadership of the gods, however, did not go unchallenged. The challenge came from Tvashtri, to whom oblique references are made in the Hymns as “the Firstborn”—a fact that may explain his own claim to the succession. Indra smote him quickly with the Thunder-Weapon, the very weapon that Tvashtri had fashioned for him. But then the struggle was taken over by Vritra (“The Obstructor”), whom some texts call the firstborn of Tvashtri but whom some scholars interpret as having been an artificial monster, because he quickly grew to an immense size. At first Indra was bested, and he fled to a far corner of Earth. When all the gods then abandoned him, only the twenty-one Maruts stood by his side. They were a group of gods who manned the fastest aerial cars, who “loud roaring as the winds make the mountains rock and reel” as they “lift themselves aloft”: These verily wondrous, red of hue, Speed on their course with a roar over the ridges of the sky . . . And spread themselves with beams of light . . . Bright, celestial, with lightning in their hands and helmets of gold upon their heads. With the aid of the Maruts, Indra returned to battle Vritra. The hymns which describe the fight in glowing terms have been translated by J. Muir (Original Sanskirt Texts) into rhyming poetic verses:

The valiant god his car ascends, Swept by his fervid bounding speeds, Athwart the sky the hero speeds, The Marut-hosts his escort form, Impetuous spirits of the storm. On flashing lightning-cars they ride. And gleam in warlike pomp and pride . . . Like lions’ roar their voice of doom; With iron force their teeth consume. The hills, the earth itself, they shake; All creatures at their coming quake. While earth quaked and all creatures ran for cover, only Vritra, the foe, calmly watched their approach: Perched on a steep aerial height Shone Vritra’s stately fortress bright. Upon the wall, in martial mood, The bold gigantic demon stood. Confiding in his magic arts. And armed with store of fiery darts. “Without alarm, defying the might of Indra’s arm,” unafraid of “the terrors of the deadly flight” rushing toward him, Vritra stood in wait.

And then was seen a dreadful sight. When god and demon met in fight. His sharpened missiles Vritra shot, His thunderbolts and lightnings hot he hurled as thick as rain. The god his fiercest rage defied; His blunted weapons glanced aside, at Indra launched in vain. When Vritra spent all his fiery missiles, Indra was able to take over the offensive;

The lightnings then began to flash. The direful thunderbolts to crash, by Indra proudly hurled. The Missiles of Zeus and Indra 69 The gods themselves with awe were stilled And stood aghast: and terror filled the universal world. . . . The Thunderbolts hurled by Indra, “forged by the master hand of Tvashtri” of divine iron, were complex, blazing missiles: Who the arrowy shower could stand. Discharged by Indra’s red right hand— The thunderbolts with hundred joints. The iron shafts with thousand points. Which blaze and hiss athwart the sky, Swift to their mark unerring fly. And lay the proudest foeman low. With sudden and resistless blow. Whose very sound can put to flight The fools who dare the Thunderer’s might. Unerringly the guided missiles hit their target: And soon the knell of Vritra’s doom Was sounded by the clang and boom of Indra’s iron shower: Pierced, cloven, crushed, with horrid yell The dying demon headlong fell down from his cloud-built tower.

Fallen to the ground “as trunks of trees that axe had felled.” Vritra lay prostrate; but though “footless and handless, still he challenged Indra.” Then Indra gave him the coup-de-grace, and “smote him with his bolt between the shoulders.” Indra’s victory was complete; but as Fate would have it, the fruits of victory were not his alone. As he was claiming the throne of Kasyapa, his father, old doubts surfaced concerning his true parenthood. It was a fact that upon his birth his mother had hid him from Kasyapa’s wrath. Why? Was there truth to the rumors that his true father was his own elder brother, Tvashtri?

The Vedas lift the veil of mystery only partly. They tell, however, that Indra, great god that he was, did not rule alone: he had to share powers with Agni and Surya his brothers—just as Zeus had to share dominions with his brothers Hades and Poseidon.