Translated by Sri Ramanan Rajagopalan

Sun and Moon may not be Powerful? What about ... Indran

Swamy Pillai Lokacharyar's discussion on Indran's case is very interesting. He starts with the following:

trilOkya pAlakanAi irundhu eppozhudhu nam padham nazhuvappOgiratho endru anchi sApathukku aatpattu...

Indran is the king of swarga loka, which is third in hierarchy from bhoomandalam. Though he is the king of all the devargal, he is always nervous not to loose his position. He even gets into lowly acts to maintain his position. There was a story of a king who succesfully completed a yAgam to get indra padhavi. He used to do lot of dhAna dharma in his kingdom. When he went to the swarga loka, Indra somehow wanted to prevent him from adorning the throne. When the king answered Indra's question on who was the great dharmasali in the king's rajyam, the latter had to reply that it was the king himself. Indra immdiately quoted the king as self-boasting soul and pushed him down back to the bhoolokam.

Once, Durvasar had the garland prasadam of Sridevi nAchiyAr. He saw indra on the way, and gifted it to him. Without showing any respect for that, indra put that on his elephant. Unknown of the vaibhavam of the prasadam, the elephant put the garland down and stepped on it. Sage Durvasar immediately cursed indra to loose all the wealth. In other instance, indra got cursed by sage Gautama for misbehaviour with his wife. That time indra got 1000 eyes all on his body.

indrajit kaiyil agappattu..

Indrajit, the son of Ravana had once defeated indran. That instance is also quoted by Pillai Lokacharyar.

MahAbali pOlvar idathil Iswaryam pari koduthu kannum kanneer kondu kazhuthum kappadaiyumAi...

Mahabali performed yAgam to get indra padhavi. At the time when he was about to finish it successfully, indran was horrified and eventually went and fell at the feet of Perumal. kappadai here refers to the torn cloth. A wealthy person, when he becomes poor, will always feel ashamed of showing his poor status to the external world, and hence will try to hide the torn cloth on his body. NammAzhwar refers to this state of a person in one of his pasurams when describing the state of a person who will get protected by Perumal. EmPerumAnAr has dedicated this pasuram for ThirunArAyanapuram:

oru nAyagamAy Oda ulagudan Andavar
karunAy kavarntha kAlar sidhaigiya pAnaiyar
perunAdu kANa immaiyilE pichchai thAm koLvar
thirunAraNan thAL kAlam peRach sindhiththuymminO (TVM 4.1.1)

This kind of person will not even be able to recognize the dog lying on the road, as it would be dark when he comes out of his place.

The fourth instance is about Govardana malai. People used to offer food to indra, but with the command of Krishna they stopped it once and offered it to the hill itself. That was consumed completely by Krishna. He himself is the hill, dam and everything as qutoed in sAstras. Krishna specifically did this act to show the people that indra is not a nitya (eternal) entity.

Let us look into the case of Brahma and others in the following postings.