Trita and the Three-Headed One

Trita was in a deep and hidden place when the call came.

The Rigveda calls it a cavern. He had been cared for there, close to his parents, and he had spent his time trying to understand what his father wanted of him. His father's weapons were kept there, and Trita knew them well. He called them his kin.

His second name was Aptya, which the old scholars explain as the one who belongs to the Waters.

Out in the world there was an enemy with three heads and seven rays. He was the son of Tvashtri, the craftsman of the gods, and his name was Vishvarupa, which means the one who has every shape. He had a great herd of cattle shut away, and he was reaching for more strength than was safe for anyone to have.

Indra came to Trita.

"Go," said Indra. "You know your father's weapons. Take them and fight."

So Trita took up the weapons and went out to battle. The hymn tells the fight in a single line: Trita killed the three-headed one and set the cattle of Tvashtri's son free.

The very next verse says that Indra did it. Indra split the proud one apart and struck the three heads from his body. Other hymns hold both together and feel no need to choose. In one of them Indra hands the son of Tvashtri over to Trita. In another Indra says, "I drove the cattle out of the dragon's grip for Trita." In a third, Indra subdues the roaring one with three heads and six eyes, and Trita, made strong by Indra's strength, brings down a boar with an iron-tipped shaft. The two fought as one.

After that, Trita lived far away. The hymns never say exactly where, only that it was a long way from everyone.

People began to send him things, though not as gifts.

A man who woke before dawn from a bad dream would turn to the first light and speak to the goddess Dawn.

"Daughter of Heaven, take this dream away. Whether it bodes ill for us or for our cattle, carry it off to Trita Aptya, far from here."

"Even if the dream looks like a garland," he would say, "even if it looks like a chain of gold, take all of it to Trita Aptya."

He asked the same for his wrongdoing.

"Gods, every ill deed of ours, the ones that are seen and the ones that are hidden, take it all away from us to Trita Aptya."

"As a man pays off a debt, part by part until nothing is owed, so we hand the whole bad dream over to Aptya. Today we have won. Today we are free of our faults."

Why Trita, and why should bad things go to him? The Rigveda gives no reason. A short charm in the Atharvaveda comes closer. The gods, it says, wiped their sin off on Trita, and Trita wiped it off again on human beings. What he wiped away lies stored in twelve separate places.

The Shatapatha Brahmana begins before Trita was born.

Agni, the fire, had been dragged out of the waters where he was hiding. He had not wanted to be found, and he was angry with the water for giving him up.

"I spit on you," he told the waters. "You are no safe place to hide. They have taken me from you against my will."

He spat, and from the water he had spat upon three gods arose. They were the Aptyas: Trita, Dvita and Ekata, the Third, the Second and the First.

The three attached themselves to Indra. They went about with him, the Brahmana says, the way a Brahman follows in the train of a king. So they were with him when the three-headed Vishvarupa, son of Tvashtri, was killed, and they knew beforehand that he was to die. It was Trita who struck him down.

It was a terrible act, and somebody had to carry the blame for it. Indra was held to be clear of it, for he is a god.

"Let those be guilty who knew that he was going to be killed," people said.

"How?"

"Let the sacrifice wipe it off on them."

So it was done, and it is still done. When a priest has rinsed the dish and washed his fingers, he pours that water out for the Aptyas, and the stain of the work goes with it.

The Aptyas did not mean to keep it.

"Let us pass this on beyond ourselves," they said.

"To whom?"

"To the man who holds a sacrifice and gives nothing to the priests."

From then on no offering was to be made without a gift, and the gods fixed a dish of boiled rice as the gift at the new moon and full moon rites. The rinsing water is warmed first, and it is poured out in three separate places, one for each brother, so that they will not quarrel over it.

"This is for you, Trita. This is for you, Dvita. This is for you, Ekata."