The Healing of Indra

Indra had killed Vishvarupa, the son of the craftsman Tvashtri, and Tvashtri would not forgive him.

The craftsman prepared Soma, the drink of the gods, and laid a spell upon it. Then he held a sacrifice and left Indra out. No cup was poured for the king of the gods.

Indra was not a god who waited to be invited. He walked in and drank the Soma by force, every drop.

It was the wrong thing to drink, and he had taken it in the wrong way. The spell did its work at once. The Brahmana says that Indra went apart in every direction. His strength ran out of him from every limb, and wherever it ran it turned into something else.

The fire of his spirit ran out through his eyes, and it became the grey he-goat. What ran from his tears became the jujube fruit. His breath of life went out through his nostrils and became the ram. The strength of his mouth became the bull, and the foam on his lips became barley. His glory went out by his ears and became the horse. The courage in his heart flew away as the eagle, king of birds. His fury became the tiger, and his might became the lion.

When it was over, the animals and the grains of the world were richer, and Indra lay on the ground with nothing left in him.

There was a demon named Namuchi who had been watching.

"He is undone for good," Namuchi said to himself. "I will take what remains."

He came with a jar of strong drink, and with it he drew off the last of Indra's power, his Soma and his food. Then he went away with them.

The gods found their king lying there, dissolved. They stood around him.

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

They turned first to the Ashvins, the twin horsemen who are the doctors of heaven.

"You are physicians. Heal him."

"Let there be a fee for us," said the twins.

"That grey goat shall be yours."

"So be it," said the Ashvins.

Then the gods turned to Saraswati.

"You are healing itself," they said. "You are the medicine. Heal him."

"Let there be a fee for me," said Saraswati.

"That ram shall be yours."

"So be it," she said.

The bull they kept for Indra himself. "There is still as much as that bull left in him," the gods said. "Let it be his own."

Then the three healers went to work. The Ashvins and Saraswati took the stolen strength back from Namuchi. They carried it to Indra and put it into him again, and they brought him out of his trouble. An earlier chapter of the same Brahmana says how Saraswati did her part. It says she is speech, and that it was by speech that the cure was made.

Indra stood up.

"We have saved him, and saved him well," the healers said to one another.

The Rigveda remembers it in a single verse. The Ashvins stood by Indra as parents stand by a son, the poet says, and Saraswati tended him.

Priests later built a whole rite on this story, with milk and strong drink and three animals: a goat for the twins, a ram for Saraswati and a bull for Indra. They called it the Sautramani, the rite of the good rescue.

The Mahabharata does not speak of a spell or a cure. In its telling Indra is not sick at all. He is guilty.

Namuchi the demon had once been so afraid of Indra that he hid inside a ray of the sun. Indra coaxed him out with a promise.

"Friend, I will not kill you with anything wet or with anything dry. I will not kill you by night or by day. I swear it."

So they were friends. Then one day there was a mist. Indra took the foam of the water, which is neither wet nor dry, and with it he cut off Namuchi's head.

He had kept the words of his oath and broken the friendship. The head knew it. It rose up and followed him wherever he went.

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

Indra could not shake it off. He went at last to Brahma, the Grandfather, and told him everything.

"There is a stream called the Aruna," Brahma said. "Sages made it holy long ago. It was hidden once, and the goddess Saraswati went to it and filled it with her own water. Where the two meet, hold a sacrifice. Give gifts. Then bathe."

Indra went to that meeting of waters. He sacrificed, and he gave away much, and then he went down into the Aruna where Saraswati ran through it.

When he came up, the guilt was gone. He went back to heaven with a light heart.

And the head? It fell into the same stream. The epic says that Namuchi too was carried by that water to happy worlds that would not end.