Vayu- Hindu GodDeity"God of Wind"

Vedic Prominence

In the great Soma rituals, Vayu receives the first offering before all other deities. The morning pressing of the sacred draught is his by right, a privilege no other god contests. The Rigveda paints him in vivid motion: he rides a shining chariot drawn now by a pair of tawny steeds, now by a full thousand, sweeping across the sky faster than any being in creation. He appears frequently in dual invocation with Indra, the two storm gods sharing the Soma as partners. Where Indra wields the thunderbolt, Vayu commands the atmosphere itself.

The Cosmic Breath

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad tells how the faculties of the body disputed which among them was supreme. Each departed in turn, and the body endured. But when breath prepared to leave, every other faculty was torn loose like tent-stakes ripped from the ground by a galloping horse. Breath alone sustains life. Breath is Vayu, the one force that never rests: not in sleep, not in death, not even at the dissolution of the worlds.

Father of Heroes

Vayu's most consequential acts in the epics are generative. When the apsara Anjana performed austerities on a mountaintop, Vayu came to her, and from their union Hanuman was born. The Ramayana's Kishkindha Kanda tells of a child whose strength and devotion would prove essential to Rama's war against Ravana. Later, when Queen Kunti invoked the gods through a mantra, Vayu fathered Bhima, the strongest of the five Pandava brothers.

Vayu and Mount Meru

The Uttara Kanda of the Ramayana tells of a contest between Vayu and Shesha. The cosmic serpent coiled his body around Mount Meru, gripping it immovably, while Vayu hurled the full force of his winds against the mountain to uproot it. The tempest raged for an entire year, flattening forests and tormenting every creature caught between them. The sage Narada intervened to broker peace, but during a moment when Shesha relaxed his grip, Vayu tore the summit off and flung it into the southern ocean. It became the island of Lanka.