Do Not Cry

The sage Vishvamitra and the young princes Rama and Lakshmana had come in sight of a fine city, and Vishvamitra told them a story about the ground it stood on.

Long before there was a city, he said, a mother came to this place to grieve.

Her name was Diti. Her sons had gone to war against the gods, and the gods had killed them. The gods were the children of her own husband, the sage Kashyapa, by his other wife.

Diti went to Kashyapa. "Your sons have killed my sons," she said. "Give me one more child. I will earn him by long discipline. Let him be the one who kills Indra."

Kashyapa looked at her sorrow and did not refuse. "So be it," he said. "But keep yourself pure for a thousand years, without one lapse. If you can do that, you will bear such a son." He laid his hand on her in blessing and went back to his own practice.

Diti was glad. She came to this spot, which was then called Kushaplava, and began her vow.

She did not keep it alone. Indra came to her, the very god she meant to destroy, and made himself her servant. He brought her fire and firewood. He brought water, sacred grass, fruit and roots, and anything else she asked for. When her body ached from the long discipline, he eased her tiredness.

Nine hundred and ninety years went by like this.

Then Diti, happy and near the end of her work, spoke to him kindly. "Ten years are left, and then you will see your brother. I am raising him for your sake. The two of you will enjoy the three worlds together."

It was noon when she said it. Sleep took her, and in her sleep she lay carelessly, with her feet where her head should have been and her hair fallen across them. For someone under a vow, this was a lapse.

Indra saw it. He laughed, and he was glad.

By his power he entered the place where the unborn child lay, and with the thunderbolt of a hundred joints he cut the child into seven.

The child cried out loudly.

"Ma rudah," said Indra. "Do not cry. Do not cry." And he went on cutting.

The cry woke Diti. "Do not kill him!" she called. "He must not be killed!"

Indra stopped at his mother's word, for Diti was his father's wife, and he came out. He stood before her with his palms joined and the thunderbolt still in his hand.

"You slept at noon with your hair on your feet," he said. "The vow was broken, and I took my chance. The one who was to kill me I have cut into seven. Forgive me."

Diti was deep in grief, but she did not curse him.

"The fault was mine," she said. "You are not to blame. But since you have taken my hope away, do me one kindness. Let these seven live. Let them wear the forms of gods and keep the seven regions of the wind. Let one move in Brahma's world, one in yours, and a third through the sky as the wind itself. Let the other four go through the four directions at your command. And let them be called Maruts, from the words you spoke to them."

Indra joined his palms again. "It will be exactly as you say. Your sons will go about as gods."

Mother and son made their peace there, in the forest of her vow, and both went up to heaven.

"That is the story of this place," Vishvamitra told Rama. "Later a king named Vishala built his city here and gave it his name. Tonight we sleep in it."

The Bhagavata Purana begins with the same grief. Here Diti's lost sons are named. They are Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu, both killed by Vishnu for Indra's sake.

In this telling Diti does not ask at once. She serves Kashyapa so gently, and for so long, that he offers her any gift she likes. Only then does she say it. "Give me a son who cannot die, and who will kill Indra."

Kashyapa is horrified. He has given his word and cannot take it back, and Indra does not deserve to die. So he finds a narrow way through.

"Keep a vow for one year," he tells her. "Harm no one. Speak no lie. Do not lie down with unwashed feet, and never sleep at sunrise or at sunset." He lists many more rules. "Keep them all, and your son will kill Indra. Break one, and your son will be Indra's friend."

Diti agrees, and the child is conceived.

Indra understands what is being prepared. He comes to his aunt's hermitage and serves her every day with flowers, fruit, firewood and water. The Purana compares him to a hunter who dresses in a deerskin to walk among the deer. He watches for a mistake and finds none, and he grows anxious.

Then one evening Diti, thin and worn out by the vow, forgets to wash after her meal and falls asleep at twilight.

Indra slips into the womb and cuts the golden child into seven. Seven voices cry out. "Do not cry," he says, and he cuts each of the seven into seven again.

Then the forty-nine speak, with their hands joined. "Indra, we are the Maruts. We are your brothers. Why are you trying to kill us?"

Indra answers them. "If you are my brothers, you have nothing more to fear from me."

Not one of them has died. The Purana gives the credit to Vishnu, whom Diti had worshipped all that year.

Diti wakes to find forty-nine sons as bright as fire, standing with Indra as friends. "I asked for one," she says. "Tell me truthfully how there come to be so many."

Indra tells her everything and calls himself a fool. She is satisfied with him, and he goes up to heaven with his new brothers.

The Rigveda's hymns to the Maruts do not tell this story. In the hymns read for this page there is no Diti, no vow and no thunderbolt at their birth. The Maruts have a different father and a different mother, and the poets name both again and again.

The father is Rudra, and the poets call the Maruts simply "the Rudras" or "Rudra's sons". The mother is Prishni. The hymns call the Maruts children of the cow, and scholars explain her name as the speckled one. One poet says the Maruts gleam with armlets the way the sky is decked with stars, ever since Rudra brought them to life in Prishni's bright lap.

Nobody cuts these children apart, because they were never one. They arrive as a troop. A hymn asks what bright beauty they are all wearing, these who are the same age and live together. They grow to their full strength together, put gold on their chests, and carry their spears on their shoulders. They yoke spotted deer to their chariots.

Then they go out, and the hymns show what follows. The woods bow down in fear. The earth shakes. The dark red storm cloud pours out its torrents, and the rain soaks the ground like a hide. Another hymn says they milk Prishni's udder.

Their name is given no meaning in these hymns, and none of them mentions crying. The link between "Marut" and "ma rudah", do not cry, belongs to the later tellings.

So the Veda has brothers who were always many, with a cow for a mother, whom scholars take to be the storm cloud. The epic and the Puranas have one child who was made many by a blow. Both say that they are brothers, and that they ride with Indra.