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