East India · Vishala (Vaishali), BiharAll traditions
Vishvamitra tells Rama the story of the ground on which Vishala stands. Diti, her sons killed by the gods, asks Kashyapa for a son to kill Indra and is told to stay pure for a thousand years. She keeps the vow at Kushaplava while Indra waits on her with fire, wood, water, grass, fruit and roots. With ten years left she sleeps at noon with her hair on her feet. Indra enters, cuts the child into seven with the hundred-jointed thunderbolt and tells it not to cry. Diti wakes and cries out that it must not be killed; Indra comes out and begs pardon. She takes the blame herself and asks that the seven become gods who keep the seven regions of the wind, named Maruts from his words. Indra agrees.
Diti's sons Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu have been killed by Vishnu for Indra's sake. She wins Kashyapa over by long service and asks for an immortal son to kill Indra. Dismayed, he sets a one-year vow with many rules: kept, the son will kill Indra; broken, he will be Indra's friend. Indra serves his aunt like a hunter in a deerskin and finds no fault until she sleeps at twilight without washing after a meal. He cuts the golden embryo into seven and each of the seven into seven. The forty-nine plead that they are his brothers, the Maruts, and he spares them. None dies, by Vishnu's grace. Diti wakes to forty-nine sons; Indra confesses and she is satisfied.
What is different here:
Forty-nine, not seven; a one-year vow of Vishnu worship, not a thousand years; the lapse is at twilight; the Maruts themselves speak; Diti makes no request for their office; Vishnu is credited with saving them.
Diti, having lost her children, pleases Kashyapa and asks for a son who will destroy Indra. He agrees if she carries the child a hundred years in perfect purity. Indra attends on her humbly, watching. In the last year she goes to bed without washing her feet. Indra divides the embryo into seven. It cries bitterly; he tries again and again to quiet it, fails, and in anger divides each part into seven. From his words 'Ma rodih' they are called Marutas, forty-nine gods who attend the wielder of the thunderbolt.
What is different here:
A hundred years; the lapse is unwashed feet at night; the second cutting is done in anger; no dialogue with Diti afterwards.
The hymns read give the Maruts no such birth. They are Rudra's sons and 'the sons whom Prishni bare', children of the cow; Rudra brought them to life in Prishni's bright lap. They are of one age and dwell together, grow to full strength together, put on gold and yoke spotted deer, and when they ride the woods bow, the earth shakes and the red storm cloud pours rain. They are said to milk Prishni's udder. No hymn read explains their name or mentions crying.
What is different here:
Different parents (Rudra and Prishni); no Diti, vow or cutting; the Maruts are many from the start; no etymology of the name.
Sources: The Ramayan of Valmiki, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1870-74); Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda sargas 46-47, Sanskrit with word-by-word English (valmikiramayan.net, D. Hanumanta Rao); Srimad-Bhagavatam (Bhaktivedanta Vedabase); The Vishnu Purana, tr. H. H. Wilson (1840); Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer