A problematic Indra
Updated On: 23 November, 2025 08:14 AM IST | Mumbai | Devdutt Pattanaik
With blood on his hands, Indra runs away and hides under water, inside a lotus stalk
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Illustration/Devdutt Pattanaik
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In Vedas, Indra is the king of the gods, who rides horse-drawn chariots to find lost cows. In later epics, he is imagined as riding a white coloured elephant, battling dark rain clouds and releasing rain with his thunderbolt (vajra). In Purana, Indra is a luxury loving god who lives in paradise. Stories of this later Indra are not very flattering. He is always scared of losing all that he has.
In one story, Indra kills his priest. His victim, Vishvarupa, is a three-headed sage who has a Brahmin father and an Asura mother. He uses one head to drink milk (human?), one to drink wine (Tantrik?), and the third to drink Soma (Vedic?). When Indra asks him to conduct a ritual to destroy the Asuras, Vishvarupa decides to make offerings to both sides, since he is related to both sides. This annoys Indra who raises his sword, and beheads the sage. They turn into three birds (pigeon, sparrow, partridge), each proclaiming his guilt: “Brahmahatya” — the crime of killing a Brahmin.
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