Here I would draw attention to the significant fact that the feat celebrated is that to which I have previously referred as the most famous of all the deeds attributed to Indra, the ’Freeing of the Waters,’ and here the Maruts are associated with the god.

But they were also the objects of independent worship.  They were specially honoured at the Câturmâsya, the feasts which heralded the commencement of the three seasons of four months each into which the Indian year was divided, a division corresponding respectively to the hot, the cool, and the wet, season.  The advantages to be derived from the worship of the Maruts may be deduced from the following extracts from the Rig-Veda, which devotes more than thirty hymns to their praise.  “The adorable Maruts, armed with bright lances, and cuirassed with golden breastplates, enjoy vigorous existence; may the cars of the quick-moving Maruts arrive for our good.”  “Bringers of rain and fertility, shedding water, augmenting food.”  “Givers of abundant food.”  “Your milchkine are never dry.”  “We invoke the food-laden chariots of the Maruts."[6] Nothing can be clearer than this; the Maruts are ‘daimons’ of fertility, the worship of whom will secure the necessary supply of the fruits of the earth.

The close association of the Maruts with Indra, the great Nature god, has led some scholars to regard them as personifications of a special manifestation of Nature, as Wind-gods.  Professor von Schroeder points out that their father was the god Rudra, later known as Çiva, the god of departed souls, and of fruitfulness, i.e., a Chthonian deity, and suggests that the Maruts represent the “in Wind und Sturm dahinjagende Seelenschar."[7] He points out that the belief in a troop of departed souls is an integral part of Aryan tradition, and classifies such belief under four main headings.

1.  Under the form of a spectral Hunt, the Wild Huntsman well known in European Folk-lore.  He equates this with Dionysus Zagreus, and the Hunt of Artemis-Hekate.

2.  That of a spectral Army, the souls of warriors slain in fight.  The Northern Einherier belong to this class, and the many traditions of spectral combats, and ghostly battles, heard, but not seen.

3.  The conception of a host of women in a condition of ecstatic exaltation bordering on madness, who appear girdled with snakes, or hissing like snakes, tear living animals to pieces, and devour the flesh.  The classic examples here are the Greek Maenads, and the Indian Senâs, who accompany Rudra.

4.  The conception of a train of theriomorphic, phallic, demons of fertility, with their companion group of fair women.  Such are the Satyrs and Nymphs of Greek, the Gandharvas and Apsaras of Indian, Mythology.

To these four main groups may be added the belief among Germanic peoples, also among the Letts, in a troop of Child Souls.

These four groups, in more or less modified forms, appear closely connected with the dominant Spirit of Vegetation, by whatever name that spirit may be known.