Indra, King of the Gods

In the court of heaven, no one dared to bring bad news to the king.

But that day, someone had to speak. Down on earth, the people of the village of Vrindavan had stopped making offerings to the god Indra. Not one gift. Not one prayer. They had turned their backs on him.

In the Hindu legend told in the Bhagavata Purana, Indra is the king of the gods and the lord of Svarga, the realm of heaven. He holds the Vajra, a mighty thunderbolt weapon. For many centuries, the people of the plains of India had looked up at the sky and prayed to him. They asked him to open his hands, to let the rain fall, to let the rice grow, to let life go on.

And now one small village dared to stop praying to him.

It is the pain of someone used to being looked up to by all, who suddenly finds himself passed over.

Indra heard the news, and he grew angry.

He did not ask why the village had changed. He did not go down to find out. He knew only that he was the king, and a king must be worshipped.

He summoned the rain clouds called Samvartaka, the storm clouds kept for punishment, and sent them down to Vrindavan.

The rain began. It was not ordinary rain. It was the rain of anger.

On the first day, water flooded the roads. On the second day, it came into the yards of the houses. Thunder crashed again and again. The sky went as dark as night at midday. The villagers hurried in every direction, looking for shelter.

But Indra looked down and saw something strange.

In the middle of the white sheets of rain, a mountain was rising.

It was not a mountain growing up out of the earth. It was Govardhan, the mountain right beside the village, lifted by a blue-skinned boy on his little finger. All the villagers, the herds of cows, the children and the old people gathered beneath the shelter of that mountain. They were dry. They were calm. No one panicked.

The Bhagavata Purana says that the boy was Krishna. But from high above, Indra saw only a child holding up one finger, and all his anger pouring down for nothing.

He sent more rain. The rain grew heavier.

The mountain did not shake. The finger did not tremble.

The third day. The fourth day. The fifth day.

Indra looked down and began to see something he had never wanted to see. He saw himself. He saw a king using floods to force a small village to pray to him again. He was using the Vajra, a weapon meant for protection, as a whip to demand worship.

That was not the power of a king.

It was the fear of someone who needs others to confirm his worth.

On the seventh day, Indra stopped the rain.

He sat in the court of heaven for a long time. Then he went down.

He rode on the back of Airavata, the white elephant of heaven, stepping through clouds that were still breaking apart. He came down close to the village of Vrindavan. There he saw Krishna setting the mountain down, as gently as laying down a leaf.

Indra was the king of the gods. He was praised in about 250 hymns of the Rig Veda, more than any other god. And now he bowed his head.

There was no thunder. There was no lightning. There was only a king and a boy, standing between earth and sky, in a world still soaked with rain.

When the Bhagavata Purana story is retold, Krishna's words to Indra are often understood like this: true greatness does not need worship to feel strong. A tree that gives shade needs no one to thank it. Rain that feeds the earth needs no one to bow before it. When a god uses his power to demand respect instead of earning it, he has lost something far more important than the Vajra.

This was the lesson that changed Indra.

It was not defeat that changed him, but the moment he looked honestly at himself. He saw the difference between using power to protect and using power to control.

But Indra has another life too, far beyond Vrindavan. Long ago, his figure crossed the Himalayas, crossed the sea, and followed the flow of Buddhist thought into the cultures of Asia.

In Buddhism, Indra became Shakra, called Sakka in Pali. In Vietnamese he is known as Đế Thích Thiên Vương. He is still a king of heaven, in a different tradition. In Buddhist tradition, Đế Thích is a protector of the Buddha's teaching. He bows in reverence before the Buddha and listens to what the Buddha teaches.

In many Mahayana Buddhist pagodas in Vietnam, Đế Thích Thiên Vương still appears in devotional paintings and carved statues, solemn as a king of heaven.

Back in Vrindavan, Indra's story closed on a very quiet moment. The rain had stopped. Mount Govardhan was back in its place beside the village. The Samvartaka clouds were gone, and the Vajra rested still in his hand. The king who had feared being passed over no longer needed anyone to look up to him. He simply bowed his head before the blue-skinned boy, like one who had just passed through his own anger and found his peace again.