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Rig Veda · 56 of 1027
Mandala 1: HYMN LVI. Indra.
1.FOR this man’s full libations held in ladles, he hath roused him, eager, as a horse to meet the mare. He stays his golden car, yoked with Bay Horses, swift, and drinks the Soma juice which strengthens for great deeds.
2.To him the guidance-following songs of praise flow full, as those who seek gain go in company to the flood. To him the Lord of power, the holy synod’s might, as to a hill, with speed, ascend the loving ones.
3.Victorious, great is he; in manly battle shines, unstained with dust, his might, as shines a mountain peak; Wherewith the iron one, fierce e’en against the strong, in rapture, fettered wily Śushṇa fast in bonds.
4.When Strength the Goddess, made more strong for help by thee, waits upon Indra as the Sun attends the Dawn, Then. he who with his might unflinching kills the gloom stirs up the dust aloft, with joy and triumphing.
5.When thou with might, upon the framework of the heaven, didst fix, across, air’s region firmly, unremoved, In the light-winning war, Indra, in rapturous joy, thou smotest Vṛtra dead and broughtest floods of rain.
6.Thou with thy might didst grasp, the holder-up of heaven, thou who art mighty also in the seats of earth. Thou, gladdened by the juice, hast set the waters free, and broken Vṛtra’s stony fences through and through.
Asked of Guide
Why does this hymn keep praising Indra's strength with images of horses, mountains, and breaking Vṛtra?
The hymn strings together concrete images—Bay Horses, a mountain peak, Vṛtra’s stony fences—to show how Indra’s strength operates across familiar realms: speed, height, and barrier-breaking. Those images celebrate a single power that moves hearts (drinking Soma), moves the cosmos (fixing the heaven’s framework), and frees the waters, tying personal vigor to cosmic order.
This is the Rig Veda’s way of making an abstract deed visible: Indra’s victory is a lived event in the world. The same technique appears in later Vedic hymns and in the Mahābhārata’s battlefield scenes, where heroic action is made real by concrete, sensory detail.
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