Hindu Gods and Heroes | Page 9

while Indra and his brother Vivasvan were still unborn they declared their resolve to oust the Adityas, the elder sons of their mother Aditi; so the Adityas tried to kill them when born, and actually slew Vivasvan, but Indra escaped. Another version (TS. II. iv. 13) says that the gods, being afraid of Indra, bound him with fetters before he was born; and at the same time Indra is identified with the Rajanya, or warrior class, as its type and representative.[8] This last point is immensely important, for it really clinches the matter. Not once, but repeatedly, the priestly literature of the generations that will follow immediately after that of the Rig-veda will be found to treat Indra as the type of the warrior order.[9] They will describe an imaginary coronation-ceremony of Indra, ending with these words: "Anointed with this great anointment Indra won all victories, found all the worlds, attained the superiority, pre-eminence, and supremacy over all the gods, and having won the overlordship, the paramount rule, the self rule, the sovereignty, the supreme authority, the kingship, the great kingship, the suzerainty in this world, self-existing, self-ruling, immortal, in yonder world of heaven, having attained all desires he became immortal."[10] Thus we see that amidst the maze of obscure legends about Indra there are three points which stand out with perfect clearness. They are, firstly, that Indra was a usurper; secondly, that the older gods fought hard but vainly to keep him from supreme divinity, and that in his struggle he killed his father; and thirdly, that he was identified with the warrior class, as opposed to the priestly order, or Brahmans. This antagonism to the Brahmans is brought out very clearly in some versions of the tales of his exploits. More than once the poets of the Rig-veda hint that his slaying of Vritra involved some guilt, the guilt of brahma-hatya, or slaughter of a being in whom the brahma, or holy spirit, was embodied[11]; and this is explained clearly in a priestly tale (TS. II. v. 2, 1 ff.; cf. SB. I. i. 3, 4, vi. 3, 8), according to which Indra from jealousy killed Tvashta's son Visvarupa, who was chaplain of the gods, and thus he incurred the guilt of brahma-hatya. Then Tvashta held a soma-sacrifice; Indra, being excluded from it, broke up the ceremony and himself drank the soma. The soma that was left over Tvashta cast into one of the sacred fires and produced thereby from it the giant Vritra, by whom the whole universe, including Agni and Soma, was enveloped (cf. the later version in Mahabharata, V. viii. f.). By slaying him Indra again became guilty of brahma-hatya; and some Rigvedic poets hint that it was the consciousness of this sin which made him flee away after the deed was done.
[Footnote 7: I follow in the interpretation of this hymn E. Sieg, Die Sagenstoffe des Rgveda, i. p. 76 ff. Cf. on the subject Ved. Stud., i. p. 211, ii. pp. 42-54. Charpentier, Die Suparnasage, takes a somewhat different view of RV. IV. xxvi.-xxvii., which, however, does not convince me; I rather suspect that RV. IV. xxvi. 1 and 4, with their mention of Manu, to whom the soma was brought, are echoes of an ancient and true tradition that Indra was once a mortal.]
[Footnote 8: The other legend in MS. II. i. 12, that Aditi bound the unborn Indra with an iron fetter, with which he was born, and of which he was able to rid himself by means of a sacrifice, is probably later.]
[Footnote 9: E.g. AB. VII. xxxi., VIII. xii. Cf. BA. Up. I. iv. 11-13.]
[Footnote 10: AB. VIII. xiv. (Keith's translation).]
[Footnote 11: Cf. Sayana on RV. I. xciii. 5.]
These bits of saga prove, as effectually as is possible in a case like this, that Indra was originally a warrior-king or chieftain who was deified, perhaps by the priestly tribe of the Angirasas, who claim in some of the hymns to have aided him in his fight with Vritra, and that he thus rose to the first rank in the pantheon, gathering round himself a great cycle of heroic legend based upon those traditions, and only secondarily and by artificial invention becoming associated with the control of the rain and the daylight.
The name Asvina means "The Two Horsemen"; what their other name, Nasatya, signifies nobody has satisfactorily explained. But even with the name Asvina there is a difficulty. They are described usually as riding together in a chariot which is sometimes said to be drawn by horses, and this would suit their name; but more often the poets say that their chariot is drawn by birds, such as eagles or swans, and sometimes even by a buffalo or buffaloes, or by an ass. I do not see how we can