The Friends Who Did Not Run

The killing of the dragon Vritra is Indra's great deed, and the hymns tell it many times. The priests who explained the rituals told one small part of it that the hymns pass over in a single verse. It is about the moment before the blow.

Indra was about to go out against Vritra. He had the thunderbolt that Tvashtri had made for him, golden, with a thousand edges. Before he went, he spoke to all the gods.

"Stand by me," he said. "Call out to me when I fight."

"We will," they said. Every one of them said it.

So they set out together, the whole company of the gods running forward to the kill, with Indra among them.

Vritra saw them coming. The Brahmana lets us hear what he thought.

"They are running here to kill me. Very well. Let me frighten them."

He did not strike at them. He only breathed. He let out his breath against them in one great snort, and that was enough. The gods who had promised turned and ran. They left Indra where he stood.

All but one troop.

The Maruts did not go. They were the storm gods, the sons of Rudra, with spears on their shoulders and gold on their chests. The hymn that remembers this day counts them as three times sixty and says they stood around Indra like heaps of shining light. They held their ground in the dragon's breath, and they shouted.

"Strike, lord! Kill him! Show your strength!"

Another Brahmana says they played around him as he went forward and sang his praises. It says too that at midday the Maruts, as scorching winds, burned Vritra until he lay panting.

Indra went in with their shouting behind him, and the dragon died.

Afterwards Indra thought about what he had seen.

"These are my friends," he said to himself. "These showed me love. I will give them a share."

Until that day, the Brahmana explains, the praise sung at the midday pressing of the Soma belonged to Indra and no one else. From that day he shared it. A cup is drawn for the Maruts, a hymn is recited for the Maruts, and their names are called beside his. The priest who told this story was explaining why.

He quotes a verse of the Rigveda as his proof. A seer saw this, he says, and put it so:

"All the gods who were your friends fled from Vritra's snorting and left you. Let your friendship be with the Maruts, Indra. Then you will win every battle."

And the hymn goes on to say what kind of friends they are. The host of the Maruts is a sharpened weapon.

The Shatapatha Brahmana explains the same midday cups, and its Maruts are not so simple.

Indra was straining to strike Vritra down. He looked for the Maruts, and they were not at his side. They had withdrawn. They were up in an ashvattha, the sacred fig tree, and there they stayed.

Indra called to them. "Join me. With you as my force I can strike Vritra."

The Maruts did not climb down. "And what will be ours if we do?"

So Indra drew two cups of Soma for them.

They looked at the cups. "We will come," they said. "But we will set this one aside first, for our vigour." They put their vigour away with the cup, and then they joined him.

Indra knew at once what they had done. They had come, and they had left their strength behind.

"Join me with your vigour," he said.

"Then draw a third cup for us."

He drew the third cup, and he said over it the words the priests still say: "You are taken for the vigour of the Maruts." Then the Maruts joined him with everything they had. With them he conquered, and with them he struck Vritra.

The Brahmana says plainly what it reads in this. Indra is the ruler, and the Maruts are the people. A ruler becomes strong through the people, and only through them. It adds that Indra was afraid they might desert him and go over to someone else, and that he gave them their share so that they would not want to.

That is why three cups are drawn at midday for Indra with the Maruts. After them comes one more, for Indra the Great. Before he killed Vritra he was only Indra, the text says. After it he was Mahendra.