Vedic era
Vedic · The Third, who fights beside Indra, presses the Soma and takes away bad dreams
Trita Aptya
Trita Aptya is one of the oldest and dimmest gods of the Rigveda. No hymn is addressed to him. He is mentioned about forty times, in twenty-nine hymns, always in passing, as someone the listeners already knew well. His name means the Third.
DeedKills the three-headed son of Tvashtri and frees the cattle
Who Trita Aptya is
Trita Aptya is one of the oldest and dimmest gods of the Rigveda. No hymn is addressed to him. He is mentioned about forty times, in twenty-nine hymns, always in passing, as someone the listeners already knew well. His name means the Third. His second name, Aptya, is explained as the one who belongs to the Waters.
In those passing mentions he does great things. He takes up his father's weapons and kills a three-headed enemy, the son of Tvashtri, and sets the cattle free (10.8). He tears the dragon Vritra limb from limb, made strong by the sacred food and drink (1.187). He breaks open the fences of the cave of Vala (1.52). These are the very deeds the hymns give to Indra, and the two are constantly found together. Sometimes Indra urges Trita on, and sometimes Indra acts for him.
He is also a maker of Soma. In the ninth book the juice is pressed on Trita's stones and purified by Trita, and the fingers that work it are called Trita's maidens. He blows on the fire in heaven like a smith at a furnace (5.9). When the storm gods ride out and the lightning flashes, Trita thunders (5.54).
His home is far away and secret. That may be why people send unwelcome things there. One hymn asks the goddess Dawn to carry every bad dream and every hidden fault away to Trita Aptya (8.47).
And one hymn shows him in trouble. Trita is at the bottom of a well, calling on the gods, and Brihaspati hears him and sets him free (1.105).
Scholars have guessed at what he was. Macdonell thought him a god of lightning whom Indra pushed aside. Others have called him a god of water, of the storm, or a healer made divine. The hymns themselves say only what he did.
Where the seven rays shine, there my family begins. Trita Aptya knows it, and he speaks for his kin.
From the Vedas to the Puranas
What became of Trita Aptya
Trita did not become a god of the Puranas. Indra took over his battles, and by the time of the Mahabharata Trita is a human sage, remembered for a well on the bank of the Sarasvati and for two brothers who left him in it.
The change can be followed step by step. The Shatapatha Brahmana (1.2.3) still calls him a god. It says that when Agni was dragged from the waters he spat on them, and from that water rose the three Aptyas, Trita, Dvita and Ekata. They follow Indra about, Trita kills the three-headed Vishvarupa, and the guilt of it is wiped off on the three. That is why rinsing water is poured out for them at the sacrifice. The Atharvaveda (6.113) says the same in a charm: the gods wiped their sin on Trita, and Trita wiped it on men.
The well grew into a full story. The Jaiminiya Brahmana (1.184) tells how Ekata and Dvita shut Trita in a well with a chariot wheel and drove off the cattle, how he saw a chant there, and how the rain floated him out. In the Mahabharata (Shalya Parva 36) the three are sons of the sage Gautama. Trita falls into a dry pit while fleeing a wolf, performs a Soma sacrifice in his mind, and is lifted out by the Sarasvati. The place, Udapana, is a bathing spot that Balarama visits on his pilgrimage. Elsewhere in the epic (Shanti Parva 337) the three brothers are sages who travel north to the White Island to seek sight of Narayana.
Trita also has a far relative. In the Avesta of ancient Iran, Thrita is the third man to press the sacred Haoma, and Thraetaona, son of Athwya, kills a three-headed, six-eyed dragon. Scholars see Trita Aptya behind both. If they are right, he was honoured before the Indian and Iranian peoples went separate ways.