Devalok
Legend · 2 tellings · Pan-India

Indra takes the wheel of the Sun for Kutsa

Who is in it

Texts: Rigveda

The story, beat by beat

  1. Kutsa fights Shushna and is hard pressed.
  2. Indra steals or tears off a wheel of the Sun's chariot.
  3. One wheel he rolls forward; one he sets free for Kutsa.
  4. Shushna is slain.

battle chariot day lengthened

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Rigveda 4.30, 1.175, 5.29, 1.130, 4.28

Pan-India All traditions

Scattered verses, never a connected tale. For Kutsa as he battled Indra stole away the Sun's car-wheel (4.30.4); he stole Surya's chariot wheel and bore Kutsa with the steeds of Wind to Shushna (1.175.4); one wheel of the Sun he rolled forward and one he set free for Kutsa (5.29.10); at dawn he tore the Sun's wheel off (1.130.9); with Soma he pressed down the wheel of Surya (4.28.2). Elsewhere he speeds the Sun and helps Etasha, the Sun's horse (4.30.6).

Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 4.30.4-6; Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 1.175.4; Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 5.29.9-10; Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 1.130.9; Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 4.28.2

Scholarly

Macdonell's reading

Pan-India All traditions

Macdonell calls this the only myth told of Surya in the Rigveda, Indra vanquishing him and stealing his wheel, and suggests it may allude to the sun obscured by a thunderstorm.

What is different here:

A scholar's interpretation, not the hymn's statement.

Vedic Mythology, A. A. Macdonell (1897) § 14

Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; Vedic Mythology, A. A. Macdonell (1897)

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