Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.35

c14.35

In several of the gods we can see the Aryans themselves magnified to heroic proportions. The greatest god of the Rigveda is Indra, to whom about one-quarter of the hymns are addressed, and he is the apotheosis of the Aryan battle-leader; strong-armed, colossal, tawny-bearded, and pot-bellied from drinking, he wields the thunderbolt in his more god-like moments, but fights like a hero with bow-and-arrows from his chariot. ‘He is strong, young, immortal, and ancient’, as Keith puts it; his appetite is enormous and he devours prodigious quantities of beef, porridge, and cakes, swilling them down with the intoxicating soma or with mead, and both his drunkenness and its after-effects are described with convincing fidelity. He is a cattle-raider, and above all he is the destroyer of the strongholds of the enemy, the victorious leader of the Aryans in their conquest of the hated ancient empire in the Punjab. With him fight the young warrior-band, the Maruts, who seem to be commanded by Rudra, rival to Indra and yet in some ways his counterpart, ‘unassailable, rapid, young, unaging, ruler of the world’ and with the malevolent characteristics which develop in later Hinduism in the person of Śiva.