The Muse

The sheer variety of symbols and artefacts in use across the ages and geographies does not necessarily point to a multitude of assumptions and values from which they spring. The study of mythology and folklore then, is a reverse approach to anthropology. This blog is dedicated to my favourite symbols, tales and artefacts - both ancient and contemporary.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

How Indra became king

...Then the Lord omnipotent, the Bramhan, created the five elements, and the five sensibles. To perceive them he created the five sense organs and five organs of action, to react to them. He created the mind with its four components, and from these twenty four elements he created the cosmic being - the prototype of all creatures to be...

...And for each of these twenty four elements, He incarnated himself as a master or mistress - Chandra, master of the subtle mind, Dhara for the earth, and so on. He called these masters the Devatas...

...As the ages passed, however, dissension grew between them, as they fought among themselves for superiority. To destroy their conceit, and to establish order, Bramhan appeared in the form of  a yaksha...

...The devatas were perplexed by the shape-shifter, and decided amongst themselves that whoever could determine its true nature, would be crowned sovereign among the gods...

... When Agni accosted it, it appeared as a piece of straw that he could not burn; to Vayu it appeared as a feather he couldn't blow away... and so on and so forth till all but Sakra, the Lord of the eyes, met it. To Sakra, it became invisible...

... And Sakra, the mighty thousand-eyed deva wondered what could create an obstacle to the very element that he was master of , and realized that it could only be his own creator. The Lord then acknowledged his answer and crowned him Indra, king of the gods, master of the rainclouds.

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This tale describes the Sankhya account of the genesis of the universe and the Vedic pantheon, and the coronation is described in the Kena Upanishad. The story talks not only of the superiority of Sakra among gods, but of the eyes among all sense organs.

Truly, eyesight is the strongest of the relatively weak human senses. We are gifted with binocular vision, i.e. the power to judge depths and distances, for example. The ancients noticed this, and it is reflected in the etymology of the Sanskrit word "Pashu", meaning animal. The word literally means "those who can see".

3 comments:

Gurdit said...

This is really interesting. The eyes are the most powerful sensory organs...hmm, I think I would accept that. Every other organ gets tired really fast. Take smell for example. The olfactory sense will stop being effective after a while. This is why you can't smell your own deodorant after a while, but when someone else enters the room, they can. The same applies with touch. When you put your hand under cold water for long enough, it will feel like the water is turning warm, until you put your other hand under the tap and realise that it's still cold.

Amit Sondhi said...

I thought the Upanishads contained only philosophy, and the mythology was in the epics and the Puranas. This is all so confusing.

My wiki-based education is not serving me well :(

Gopal said...

Upanishads are poetic... Literal meanings can sometime mislead... Indra does not stand for eyes.. He stands for the part of mind which enjoys the world through its sense organs. Hence he is called 1000 eyed.