Kathasaritsagara (the Ocean of Story)
by Somadeva | 1924 | 1,023,469 words | ISBN-13: 9789350501351
This is the English translation of the Kathasaritsagara written by Somadeva around 1070. The principle story line revolves around prince Naravāhanadatta and his quest to become the emperor of the Vidhyādharas (‘celestial beings’). The work is one of the adoptations of the now lost Bṛhatkathā, a great Indian epic tale said to have been composed by ...
The legend of Indra cutting off the wings of the mountains
Note: this text is extracted from Book XII, chapter 68
“Then, as he was roaming about with the jackal transformed into a female elephant, he entered a tank full of the mud produced by the autumn rains, to crop a lotus. He sank in the mud there, and could not move, but remained motionless, like a mountain that has fallen owing to its wings having been cut off by the thunderbolt”
This refers to a curious myth about Indra cutting off the wings of the mountains with his thunderbolt (vajra). Although there is a possible reference to it in the Ṛg-Veda (iv, 54, 5), the first account is found in the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā (i, 10, 13). References to it in classical literature are numerous. Kālidāsa mentions it both in Raghuvaṃśa (see Johnstone’s trans., iii, 177, 204, pp. 25, 26) and Kumāra-Sambhava (see Griffith’s Birth of the War-God, pp. 4, 5).
According to the myth it appears that originally the mountains flew about like birds, and, owing to their constant moving about, upset the balance of the earth. Thereupon Indra cut off their wings with his vajra, thus forcing them to settle down permanently where they were. Only Maināka, son of Himālaya and Menā, escaped; he hid himself in the ocean, where he was protected by Sāgara. (See A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 62, and cf. Pischel, Vedische Studien, vol. i, p. 174.)
The full explanation of the myth is not easy to discover. Tales of flying mountains are not uncommon among the Indo-Aryans, and as they appear to be usually told about hills situated away from the great mountain ranges, we can probably explain part of the myth geologically. The hills south of the Vindhyas are prominences left standing while the surrounding land has sunk by gradual denudation. These “outhers” might well have called for an explanation from an unscientific people, and it seems not unlikely, as Sten Konow has suggested (Aryan Gods of the Mitani People, 1921, p. 29), that the myth is of pre-Aryan origin and originally related to a pre-Aryan deity. At a later date it became known to the Aryans, and was immediately attributed to Indra. —n.m.p.