The Head and the Foam

The Rigveda gives this story one line. "With the foam of the waters, Indra, you tore off the head of Namuchi." That is all. The priests who came later told the rest.

It began on a bad day for Indra. He had forced his way into the craftsman Tvashtri's sacrifice and drunk Soma that was not meant for him, and the drink had turned on him. His strength ran out of every limb. It ran out of him and became other things: a goat, a ram, a bull, barley, the lion, the tiger, the fig tree. The king of the gods lay on the ground like an emptied skin.

There was an Asura named Namuchi, and he was watching.

"He is finished," Namuchi thought. "This time for good. I will have what is left of him."

He came with a cup of sura, the strong drink of grain, and through that drink he took the last things Indra had: his vigour, his share of Soma, his food. Then he went away with them.

The gods gathered around the one who lay there.

"He was the best of us," they said. "Evil has come upon him. Let us heal him."

When Indra could stand, he went as fast as he was able to the twin Ashvins, the physicians of the gods, and to the goddess Sarasvati.

"He has taken everything from me," he cried. "And I cannot touch him. I have sworn an oath to Namuchi. I said: I will not kill you by day or by night. I will not kill you with a staff or with a bow, with the flat of my hand or with my fist, with anything dry or with anything wet. I swore it, and now he has robbed me. Bring back what is mine!"

The Ashvins and Sarasvati looked at one another.

"Let us have a share in it," they said, "and we will bring it back."

"It shall belong to all of us together," said Indra. "Only bring it back."

So the three of them thought about the oath, word by word. Not by day, not by night. Nothing dry, nothing wet.

They went to the water and gathered its foam, and they poured the foam out into the shape of a thunderbolt.

"This is not dry," they said, "and it is not wet."

Then they waited for the hour. The night was thinning. The sun had not yet risen. The sky was grey, and it was neither one thing nor the other.

"It is not day," said Indra, "and it is not night."

He took the foam in his hand and struck off the head of Namuchi.

Everything that had been stolen was inside the Asura. Indra took his strength back out of him. But in the severed head the Soma lay mixed with blood, and the gods shrank from it. They had to find a way to draw the one out from the other before any of them could drink.

They found it, and they made a rite of it, with milk and sura, a goat for the Ashvins, a ram for Sarasvati and a bull for Indra. The gods had said, "We have saved him well." In their language that is sutrata, and so the rite is called the Sautramani to this day.

The Rigveda remembers the helpers too. The Ashvins stood by Indra, one hymn says, as a father and mother stand by a son, and Sarasvati made him well again.

The Mahabharata tells this story at a bathing place. Balarama, Krishna's brother, is walking the banks of the river Sarasvati from one holy ford to the next, and at a stream called the Aruna the tale is told of why Indra once came to bathe there.

In this telling there is no theft and no cup of strong drink. Namuchi is simply afraid. He fears Indra so much that he hides inside a ray of the sun.

Indra called him out with a promise.

"Be my friend, best of Asuras," he said. "I will not kill you with anything wet or with anything dry. I will not kill you by night or by day. I swear this to you by truth."

Namuchi believed him and came out.

Some time later Indra saw a fog lying over the world, a grey hour that was neither day nor night. He took the foam of the water and cut off Namuchi's head.

But the head did not lie where it fell. It rose and came after him.

"Killer of a friend!" it cried, close behind his shoulder. "Wretch! Killer of a friend!"

Wherever Indra went, the head went too, and it would not be silent. At last, sick with grief, he went to Brahma, the Grandsire, and told him the whole of it.

"Go to the Aruna," Brahma said. "The sages have made that water holy, and the Sarasvati herself has come to join it. Offer sacrifice there. Give gifts. Then bathe, and you will be free."

Indra did as he was told. He sacrificed on the bank, gave gifts with an open hand and went down into the stream, and the weight came off him.

The head went into the water after him. The river that washed the killer washed the killed as well, and the Mahabharata says that Namuchi rose from it to bright worlds of his own that would never end.