in appearance he is vigorous, huge; he is wise and true and kind; all treasures are his, and he is a wealth-holder, vast as four seas; neither his greatness nor his generosity can be comprehended; mightiest of gods is he, filling the universe; the heavens rest upon his head; earth cannot hold him; earth and heaven tremble at his breath; he is king of all; the mountains are to him as valleys; he goes forth a bull, raging, and rushes through the air, whirling up the dust; he breaks open the rain-containing clouds, and lets the rain pour down; as the Acvins restore the light, so he restores the rain; he is (like) fire born in three places; as the giver of rain which feeds, he creates the plants; he restores or begets Sun and Dawn (after the storm has passed);[6] he creates (in the same way) all things, even heaven and earth; he is associated with Vishnu and P[=u]shan (the sun-gods), with the Acvins, with the Maruts (storm-gods) as his especial followers, and with the artisan Ribhus.  With Varuna he is an Aditya, but he is also associated with another group of gods, the Vasus (x. 66. 3), as Vasupati, or ’lord of the Vasus.’  He goes with many forms (vi. 47. 18).[7]

The luminous character[8] of Indra, which has caused him to be identified with light-gods, can be understood only when one remembers that in India the rainy season is ushered in by such displays of lightning that the heavens are often illuminated in every direction at once; and not with a succession of flashes, but with contemporaneous ubiquitous sheets of light, so that it appears as if on all sides of the sky there was one lining of united dazzling flame.  When it is said that Indra ‘placed light in light,’ one is not to understand, with Bergaigne, that Indra is identical with the sun, but that in day (light) Indra puts lightning (x. 54. 6; Bergaigne ii. p. 187).

Since Indra’s lightning[9] is a form of fire, there is found in this union the first mystic dualism of two distinct gods as one.  This comes out more in Agni-worship than in Indra-worship, and will be treated below.  The snake or dragon killed by Indra is Vritra, the restrainer, who catches and keeps in the clouds the rain that is falling to earth.  He often is called simply the snake, and as the Budhnya Snake, or snake of the cloud-depths, is possibly the Python (=Budh-nya).[10] There is here a touch of primitive belief in an old enemy of man—­the serpent!  But the Budhnya Snake has been developed in opposite ways, and has contradictory functions.[11]

Indra, however, is no more the lightning than he is the sun.  One poet says that he is like the sun;[12] another, that he is like the lightning (viii. 93. 9), which he carries in his arms (viii. 12. 7); another, that he is like the light of dawn (x. 89. 12).  So various are the activities, so many the phenomena, that with him first the seer is obliged to look back of all these phenomena and find in them one person; and thus he is the most anthropomorphized of the Vedic