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Skandha 6, adhyayas 9-12 · Saptah day 3
The demon Indra must kill turns out to be a devotee, and prays on the battlefield more beautifully than the god who kills him.
The trouble had begun with Indra's pride. He had once failed to rise for his teacher Brihaspati, who left him, and the gods took Vishvarupa, son of Tvashta, as their priest instead. Vishvarupa had three heads, and while he offered oblations to the gods openly, he quietly gave a share to the asuras, his mother's people. Indra found out and cut off all three heads.
That killing made Indra guilty of slaying a brahmana. He carried the guilt for a year and then divided it among the earth, the waters, the trees and women, each of whom accepted a share in exchange for a gift. But Tvashta did not forgive. He poured oblations into the fire, calling for an enemy of Indra, and out of the southern fire rose Vritra.
He was immense, dark as a burnt mountain, and he grew in every direction by an arrow's length each day. He swallowed the weapons the gods hurled at him. The defeated gods went to the Lord and praised him, and the Lord told them what to do. Go to the sage Dadhichi, he said, and ask him for his body. From his bones Vishvakarma will make a weapon, and with it, by my power, Indra will kill Vritra.
Dadhichi's answer is brief and generous. At first he observed that a body is the dearest thing a creature has, and asked whether they understood what they were asking for. Then he said that a body will be lost anyway, and anyone who will not use a perishing thing for the good of others deserves pity. He sat in yoga and gave it up. Vishvakarma shaped his bones into the vajra, the thunderbolt.
Then came the battle, and with it the surprise. The asuras broke and ran, and Vritra called after them in scorn. He held his ground alone, struck Indra's elephant with his club, and then spoke to Indra. You killed my brother, he said, a brahmana and your own priest; now I will split your heart. Or else your thunderbolt, made from Dadhichi's bones and charged with the Lord's power, will kill me, and I will be freed from this body and go where the sages go.
And then he turned from Indra and prayed, and the prayer is among the best loved in the whole Bhagavatam. He asked to be born again as the servant of the Lord's servants. He asked that his mind remember the Lord, his speech praise him and his body work for him. He did not want the seat of Brahma, or rule over the earth or the heavens, or mystic powers, or even freedom from rebirth if it meant being without the Lord. As unfledged birds long for their mother, as a hungry calf longs for milk, as a lonely wife longs for her absent husband, so, he said, his mind longed to see the Lord. And wherever his deeds carried him, he asked for the friendship of the Lord's devotees.
He fought. He hurled his trident; Indra broke it with the thunderbolt and cut off one of his arms. With the other Vritra struck Indra on the jaw with an iron club, and the thunderbolt fell from Indra's hand. Indra was ashamed to pick it up with everyone watching. Vritra told him to pick it up: this was no time for dejection. Victory and defeat, he said, are not in anyone's own hands; all beings are moved by the Lord, like wooden puppets.
Indra was astonished, and said so. Vritra, a demon by birth, had become a great devotee and crossed beyond the Lord's illusion. They fought on. Indra cut off the other arm, and Vritra, armless, opened his mouth from earth to sky and swallowed Indra and his elephant whole. Indra, protected by the armour of Narayana, cut his way out through the belly with the thunderbolt and severed Vritra's head. A light rose from Vritra's body and, while all the worlds watched, entered the Lord.
Parikshit asks that very question at the start of the following chapter: how did a being of such dark passion come to such devotion? The answer takes a whole earlier life, as the king Chitraketu. That is the shape the sixth book gives the episode. A war that began in pride is won by the gods, and the one who sees the Lord most clearly is standing on the other side of it.
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