Indra- Hindu GodDeity"King of the Gods"

The Slayer of Vritra

In the Rigveda, Indra is the central deity, addressed in more hymns than any other god. The hymns celebrate his prodigious consumption of soma before battle: entire lakes of the sacred drink that swelled his body to fill heaven and earth.

His defining myth is the killing of Vritra. The serpent demon had enclosed the cosmic waters within clouds or mountains, and drought gripped the world. Engorged with soma, Indra grew to cosmic size and wielded his vajra, forged by the divine artisan Tvashtar from the spine of the sage Dadhichi, who had sacrificed his own body to arm the gods. Indra struck Vritra and the waters burst forth, flowing to the sea.

But the victory carried a cost. In several Brahmana accounts, Vritra was a brahmin, making Indra guilty of brahmahatya, the most heinous sin in dharmic law. The sin pursued him as a terrifying hag. He fled through heaven and earth, finally hiding inside a lotus stalk in a pond. He stayed there for a thousand years. The gods found him and purified him through ritual, but the sin could not be destroyed. The Shatapatha Brahmana records that it was divided into four parts and distributed among fire, water, plants, and women.

The Rigveda also celebrates Indra's recovery of the divine cattle from the Vala cave. The Panis, a race of demons, had stolen the cattle and sealed them inside a mountain. With the help of the Angiras sages and his companion Sarama, the first dog, Indra tracked the cattle, split open the mountain, and released the cows and the dawn together. Against the demon Namuchi, who had bound Indra in a pact of friendship, he found a different kind of weapon: the foam of the sea at twilight, neither dry nor wet, neither day nor night, which killed Namuchi without violating the letter of their agreement.

The Thousand Eyes

Indra is depicted with a thousand eyes covering his body. The Ramayana tells how it happened. Smitten with the beauty of Ahalya, wife of the sage Gautama, Indra disguised himself as her husband and seduced her. When Gautama discovered the deception, he cursed Indra's body to be covered with a thousand yonis, marking his transgression for all to see. The gods later modified these marks into eyes.

The Court of Svarga

Indra's celestial realm, Svarga, sits atop Mount Meru. His capital Amaravati is described in the Mahabharata as a city of jeweled palaces and wish-fulfilling trees. His queen Shachi, daughter of the demon Puloman, was won after Indra slew her father. She defended his honor fiercely and pleaded for his return during his many exiles.

The court was attended by apsaras of extraordinary beauty whom Indra dispatched to distract sages whose accumulated austerities threatened his throne. The sage Vishvamitra lost decades of penance to the apsara Menaka. The Gandharvas filled Svarga with music, and the Maruts stood ready for war. But the throne was never secure. Each cosmic age has its own Indra, and the current holder must constantly defend his seat against demons and sages whose power threatens to surpass his own.

Indra Humbled

The Puranas humble Indra repeatedly. When the sage Durvasa cursed him, Indra lost his power and was driven from heaven. The gods had to churn the ocean to regain the nectar of immortality, an enterprise requiring Vishnu's direct intervention. When the demon king Bali conquered the three worlds through sheer accumulated merit, Indra was driven from Svarga again; Vishnu, as the dwarf Vamana, tricked Bali into giving away the cosmos in three steps.

The sharpest humiliation came from a boy. The people of Vrindavan traditionally worshipped Indra with offerings to ensure rain. The young Krishna convinced them to worship Govardhan Hill instead, arguing that the hill and its forests sustained them more directly than a distant god. Enraged, Indra sent seven days of devastating rain to destroy the village. Krishna lifted the entire hill with one finger and held it as an umbrella over his people. Indra descended to earth and begged forgiveness.

Father and Thief

Arjuna, the great hero of the Mahabharata, was Indra's son through Kunti by divine mantra. During the Pandavas' exile, Indra brought Arjuna to Svarga for five years, trained him in divine warfare, and gifted him celestial weapons. Through Arjuna, the old thunder god's legacy passed into the war that would reshape the world.

But Indra also stole for his son's sake. Karna, Arjuna's greatest rival, had been born wearing divine armor, the kavacha and kundala, which made him invulnerable. Indra approached Karna disguised as a brahmin and asked for the armor as a gift. Karna's father Surya had warned him it was a trap. Karna gave the armor anyway, cutting the gold from his own flesh. The generosity was so extraordinary that even Indra was shamed by it. He offered the Shakti weapon in return, a single-use javelin of terrible power. Karna would spend it on Ghatotkacha rather than Arjuna, and the last protection Indra had stolen for his son proved unnecessary.