The Vajra of Indra

[gatito]

 

 

In Hinduism, the Vajra is the powerful weapon of the king of the gods, Indra. The Vajra is also a very potent symbol in Buddhism, especially in Tantric Buddhism. It also appears in Jainism, as the representation of the Thirthankar Dharmanatha.

 

In Hinduism, the Vajra plays a prominent role in many of Indra’s myths. The fullest creation story of the Vajra comes from later Hindu texts, after the introduction of the Trimurti and subsequent lessening of Indra’s power. It is said that Indra and the other gods were chased out of heaven by the demon Vritra, who took the form of a dragon and devoured all of the waters of the world.

 

Unable to defeat Vritra on his own, Indra approached Brahma and asked him for help. Brahma told Indra that no weapon the gods had could defeat Vritra, and that to do so he would have to craft a spear from the spine of the great Rishi Dadhichi. Indra approached Dadhichi and explained to him that he needed his spine to liberate the world. Dadhichi gladly accepted, noting that he would some day die anyway, and it would be better to die in the service of mankind. He entered meditation and his spirit abandoned his body, which was devoured by forest creatures, leaving only his spine. Indra took up the spine and crafted it into the Vajra, with which he defeated Vritra.

 

In Tibetan Buddhism the vajra is referred to as the dorje. It represents the male principle, and a symbolic vajra is held in the right hand during many rituals. The vajra is said to be absolutely indestructible, representing pure knowledge which can destroy all ignorance. The symbolic vajra is constructed to demonstrate a number of various principles.

 

In the center is a flattened sphere, representing the true reality of the universe. The sphere is surrounded by three rings, representing effortlessness, signlessness, and emptiness, the three blisses of Buddhahood. From the rings spring two lotuses, with eight petals each. Eight of these petals represent the eight historic bodhisattvas, and eight represent their historic consorts. Each lotus also holds three more rings. Three of these rings represent wisdom, meditation, and effort, while three represent generosity, discipline, and patience, together representing the six perfections.

 

From each of these lotuses also spring five prongs. Five represent the five historic Buddhas, Amitabha, Amogasiddhi, Ratnasambhava, Akshobhya, and Vairochana, while five represent their five consorts, Pandara, Tara, Vajradhatvishvari, Mamaki, and Lochana. Together these prongs are said to represent the entire ten perfections, encompassing the six already discussed, as well as aspiration, inner strength, skill, and purity of awareness. The outermost prongs also come from small seamonster heads, for a total of four. These heads are said to represent many different things, including the four elements, the four joys, the four karmas, and the four doors towards liberation. The symmetry between the two sides of the vajra is said to represent the symmetry between the two truths: absolute truth and the relative truth of experience.

 

www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-vajra.htm

 

 

 

[gatito]

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Edited January 7, 2016 by gatito

[chimera]

Archaeology Institute of America April 2002 reports a bronze club in diamond shape with leather strap dated 4300BP, found near Samara on the Volga Russia. It is discussed in the article as being an origin for Indra's vajra. This suggests Iranian horse tribes or peoples associated with them.

[gatito]

Ties in with the following, I think..
 

An animated map shows how Sanskrit may have come to India

Contrary to Hindutva myth-making, evolutionary biologists at the University of Auckland find that Indo-European speakers may have come into India from modern-day Turkey.
 
Shoaib Daniyal Jun 10, 2015 · 01:30 pm
 

 
People in a vast swathe of the  Eurasian continent, from Britain in the west to Bengal in the east, are speakers of languages that belong to the same linguistic group, the Indo-European family. About half of the planet’s population today speaks an Indo-European language.

This is a remarkable fact: it means that around 3 billion people speak tongues that descended from what was, once upon a time, a single language and was spoken by a group of nomads whose numbers wouldn’t have been larger than that of a tribal confederation.

Indo-European expansion

How did this single language, which linguists have taken to calling Proto-Indo-European, spread across the word, giving rise to entities as diverse as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French, Persian and Bhojpuri?

The nomadic tribes that spoke the language spread through large parts of the known world around 6,000 years ago. In the words of anthropologist David W. Anthony, writing in his fantastic book on the spread of the Indo-Europeans, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World:
The people who spoke the Proto-Indo-European language lived at a critical time in a strategic place. They were positioned to benefit from innovations in transport, most important of these being the beginning of horseback riding and the invention of wheeled vehicles.
Horses, wagons and chariots gave these Indo-Europeans certain advantages militarily over the existing settled societies of Europe and Asia. Another innovation was biological: Indo-Europeans developed a gene mutation that allowed them to digest milk even after being weaned, thus providing these nomads with a continuous and mobile source of nutrition. We can see echoes of these historical facts in the culture of the early Vedic people who venerated horses and frowned upon the killing of milch cattle.

Where was the Indo-European homeland?

While this much the experts agree on, there are two competing hypotheses for the place of origin of these Indo-Europeans (or, as they were earlier know, the Aryans). The conventional view places their homeland in the Pontic steppe, which corresponds to modern-day Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. An alternative hypothesis claims that the Proto-Indo-Europeans spread from Anatolia in modern-day Turkey.

The latter hypothesis was recently backed up by a seminal study led by evolutionary biologist Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, which was published in the journal Science. Here’s an animated map that illustrates the results of that research.

Politics behind the theory

For a dry thesis on human prehistory, the Indo-European theory of migration has caused enormous upheavals in the modern world. Because these initial Indo-European speakers had been able to get about and, in many cases, managed to spread their culture around, a certain Mr Hitler, who considered himself a descendant of these people – the Aryans – mangled the theory into one of racial supremacy.

Race as a concept is mostly nonsense but the damage that Hitler caused with it meant that academics stopped using the word “Aryan” lest anyone think they were talking of a blue-eyed, blonde-haired alpha people (although Indian text books are yet to get the memo). “Indo-European” is the correct term now.

While the Nazis had gone overboard in their acceptance of Aryan migration, at the other end of the spectrum, many of the very people who had coined the word “Aryan” have rejected it completely.

The Hindutva out-of-India myth

In India, driven by the 20th-century ideology of Hindutva, which made nationality a matter of historical association with the subcontinent, a few people vehemently dismissed this now-standard academic consensus of migrants from the north-west bringing into India key cultural markers such as the nascent Vedic religion and early forms of Sanskrit, the liturgical language of modern Hinduism.

Instead, hemmed in by doctrine, Hindutva ideologues such as Belgian Indologist Koenraad Elst try and explain the massive spread of Indo-European languages by postulating that the original home of these Aryans was India – a theory almost as ridiculous today as Intelligent Design or a Flat Earth Hypothesis.

With the Hindutva ideology gaining popularity, you now have a huge number of people who consider this sort of dodgy stuff to be authentic. And as we can see from peeping across our western border, believing in a wonky, made-up history can have terrible consequences.
 
We welcome your comments at [email protected]

 

Soutce:- http://scroll.in/article/732899/video-an-animated-map-shows-how-sanskrit-may-have-come-to-india

[9th]

1. FATHER of Maruts, let thy bliss approach us: exclude us not from looking on the sunlight.

Gracious to our fleet courser be the Hero may we transplant us, Rudra, in our children.

 

2 With the most saving medicines which thou givest, Rudra, may I attain a hundred winters.

Far from us banish enmity and hatred, and to all quarters maladies and trouble.

 

3 Chief of all born art thou in glory, Rudra, armed with the thunder, mightiest of the mighty.

Transport us over trouble to well-being repel thou from us all assaults of mischief.

 

4 Let us not anger thee with worship, Rudra, ill praise, Strong God! or mingled invocation.

Do thou with strengthening balms incite our heroes: I hear thee famed as best of all physicians.

 

5 May I with praise-songs win that Rudra's favour who is adored with gifts and invocations.

Ne’er may the tawny God, fair-checked, and gracious, swift-hearing, yield us to this evil purpose.

 

6 The Strong, begirt by Maruts, hath refreshed me, with most invigorating food, imploring.

As he who finds a shade in fervent sunlight may I, uninjured, win the bliss of Rudra.

 

7 Where is that gracious hand of thine, O Rudra, the hand that giveth health and bringeth comfort,

Remover of the woe that Gods have sent us? O Strong One, look thou on me with compassion.

 

8 To him the strong, great, tawny, fair-complexioned, I utter forth a mighty hymn of praises.

We serve the brilliant God with adorations, we glorify, the splendid name of Rudra.

 

9 With firm limbs, multiform, the strong, the tawny adorns himself with bright gold decorations:

The strength of Godhead ne’er departs from Rudra, him who is Sovereign of this world, the mighty.

 

10 Worthy, thou carriest thy bow and arrows, worthy, thy many-hued and honored necklace.

Worthy, thou cuttest here each fiend to pieces: a mightier than thou there is not, Rudra.

 

11 Praise him the chariot-borne, the young, the famous, fierce, slaying like a dread beast of the forest.

O Rudra, praised, be gracious to the singer. let thy hosts spare us and smite down another.

 

12 I bend to thee as thou approachest, Rudra, even as a boy before the sire who greets him.

I praise thee Bounteous Giver, Lord of heroes: give medicines to us as thou art lauded.

 

13 Of your pure medicines, O potent Maruts, those that are most wholesome and health-bestowing,

Those which our father Manu hath selected, I crave from Rudra for our gain and welfare.

 

14 May Rudra's missile turn aside and spare us, the great wrath of the impetuous One avoid us.

Turn, Bounteous God, thy strong bow from our princes, and be thou gracious to our seed and offspring.

 

15 O tawny Bull, thus showing forth thy nature, as neither to be wroth, O God, nor slay us.

Here, Rudra, listen to our invocation. Loud may we speak, with heroes, in assembly.

 

 

- Rig Veda, Hymn XXXIII