God of the Week: Indra

07/26/2010: Indra

Indra is the Indian king of the gods. He is a thunder god, similar to Zeus or Thor.

“Of the gods of the atmosphere by far the greatest is Indra,whose name occurs among the list of Mitannian gods. He ismore anthropomorphic than any other Vedic deity. His head,his arms, and his hands are mentioned, as is his great belly in which he puts the soma; he moves his jaws after drinking soma, and his lips are beautiful. His beard waves in the air, he has tawny hair and beard. His long, strong, well-shaped arms wield the thunderbolt, which was fashioned for him by Tvastr or Usanas. This is his chief weapon, and it is described as a stone, as hundred-jointed and thousand-pointed, hundred-angled, sharp, and metallic; rarely it is said to be of gold. Occasionally he bears a bow and arrows, hundred-pointed and winged with a thousand feathers, and sometimes he carries a goad. He travels in a golden chariot drawn by two or more horses, as many as eleven hundred being mentioned. He is a gigantic eater and drinker; at his birth he drank soma and for the slaying of Vrtra he drank three lakes or even thirty. He eats the flesh of twenty or a hundred buffaloes, and when he was born the worlds quaked with fear. His mother is described as a cow and he as a bull; she is also called Nistigrl, and he willed to be born unnaturally through her side.

-Mythology of All Races, Vol 6
by A. Berriedale Keith
Louis Herbert Gray, Editor

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2 Comments on “God of the Week: Indra”


  1. this blog give an inspiration to everyone.
    I like this blog because it has the goal to educate people with word of GOD.

  2. Elijah L. Mendoza Says:

    There is too little distinction between gods and men for us to be surprised that the gods were once mere mortals, or that there are ancient as well as more recent gods. How they won immortality is uncertain: Savitr or Agni bestowed it upon them, or they obtained it by drinking soma, whereas Indra gained it by his ascetic practices. Yet it seems clear that they did get it and that when the gods are called unaging, it does not mean, as in the mythology of the epic, that they endure only for a cosmic age; for this latter concept is bound up with the philosophy which sees no progress in the world and which, therefore, resolves all existence into a perpetual series of growth and passing away.


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