The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.93

c9.93

But over and beyond, Indra performs in his professional capacity of Hercules a large assortment of other "stunts." He releases the cows from the stables of the avaricious who confine them and will not sacrifice them to the gods. He also performs the heavenly analogue of this deed: he breaks open the stables of darkness, presided over by another demon of the name of Vala, and releases the heavenly cows, that is, the light of dawn and the sun. It seems impossible to hold aloof this important myth from the classical myths of Heracles and three-headed Geryon, and Hercules and three-headed Cacus. Hercules carries off the cattle which belong to the monster, or, in the case of Cacus, which the monster had stolen from the hero, and had hidden away in his cave.¹ Indra, moreover, kills a great variety of other demons. To the immediate conception of the Veda he is indeed a sort of Hercules, the most personal of all the gods, so personal that people begin to doubt his existence, and ask, "Who has seen him?" I have brought much sympathy to Professor Hillebrandt's interpretation which I hope may in the end turn out to be the right one; for the present it has left me in the frame of mind indicated by the word opaque. I confess, I cannot pass over as lightly as does Hillebrandt the unanimous Hindu tradition that Vritra is the cloud. The partnership of Indra with Vāyu "Wind" is paralleled suggestively by the association of Parjanya and Vāta, "Wind." Parjanya is beyond peradventure a god of the thunder-storm. It is therefore still possible that the myth of Indra, Vritra, and the waters represents a specialised poetic treatment of a myth of thunder-storm, cloud, and rain. The myth may have, so to speak, been brought down to earth: Indra, the storm god, becomes a Hercules, and kills a dragon who hoards in the mountains (formerly, the clouds), the rivers (formerly, the rain of the clouds). For a final solution of this most important theme in mythology it seems to me that we must look to the future. The confirmation of Hillebrandt's masterly theory, if it comes at all, must come from Iran or Western Asia. Such confirmation should establish more definitely Indra's and Vritra's character in the Indo-Persian time from which, if not from a still earlier time, dates their beginning. If these earlier data should by any chance ever show Indra and Vritra in the mutual relation of summer and winter, then Hillebrandt’s hypothesis, and I fear not until then, would be triumphantly vindicated.