A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s2.87

v1.c8.s2.87

However that may be, it is certain that the Vedic singers themselves had no clear consciousness of the original meaning of Indra and Vṛtra as nature-gods. For them Indra was a powerful champion, a giant of enormous strength, but Vṛtra the most dreaded of the demons, which were believed to be embodied in the black aborigines of the land. For Indra does not fight only with Vṛtra, but with numerous other demons. His demon-fights are only a copy of the battles which the Aryan immigrants had to fight. Therefore, too, Indra is above all a god of warriors. Of none of the gods of the Vedic pantheon are so many individual traits given us, none is portrayed so "true to life"—if one may use the expression with reference to a deity—as this warlike god in the 250 hymns which are dedicated to him. Big and strong are his arms. With beautiful lips he quaffs the Soma-drink, and when he has drunk, he moves his jawbones with pleasure, and shakes his fair beard. Fair as gold is his hair, and his whole appearance. He is a giant in stature,—heaven and earth would not be large enough to serve him as a girdle. In strength and vigour no heavenly nor earthly being approaches him. When he grasped the two endless worlds, they were for him only a handful. He is called by preference a bull. Boundless as his strength, is also his power of drinking, which is described, often not without humour, in the songs. Before he slew Vṛtra, he drank three ponds of soma; and once it is even said that he drank, in one gulp, thirty ponds of soma juice. Scarcely was he born—and his birth was no ordinary one, for still in his mother’s womb he said : “I do not want to go out here, that is a bad way ; across, through the side, I will go out ” (Ṛv. IV, 18, 2)—when he already drank goblets of soma. Sometimes, too, he did too much of a good thing. In the song Ṛv. X, 119, a poet brings before us the intoxicated Indra, uttering a monologue and considering what he is to do—“Thus I will do it, no, thus,” “I will place the earth here, no, I will place it there,” and so on—where each verse ends with the significant refrain “Have I, then, drunk of the Soma ?”