But to proceed in the order which we have hitherto generally followed, let us examine before all the tradition of the aquatic monster, the dragon or serpent, in Hindoo mythology.
The most important of the heroic undertakings accomplished by the Vedic god Indras is, as already remarked, that of killing the monster; and the enterprise of Indras against the monster is the theme of all the great popular Indo-Persian, Græco-Latin, Turko-Slavonic, Franco-Germanic, and Franco-Celtic epic poems, as also of the greatest number of the popular stories which are the real epic material of the new epopees. Indras, Vishṇus, Ahura-Mazda, Feridun, Apollo, Hêraklês, Kadmos, Jason, Odin, Sigurd, and several other gods and heroes, are celebrated for the undertaking of killing the serpent. Now, in the Vedic hymns the black monster (kṛishṇas), the growing monster (râuhin),[529] the full-grown monster (piprus), the monster coverer (vṛitras), the monster that dries up (çushṇas), the monster that keeps back (namućis), generally appears with the name and shape of a serpent, or if it has not always the form of a serpent, it is assimilated to it, and certainly inclines to become so from its office of a constrictor, its black colour, and other characteristics which it possesses in common with the serpent (Ahis).[530]
The monster killed by Indras, the monster with the horrid voice which Indras strikes upon the head with a thunderbolt, is, like the serpent, deprived of feet, deprived both of hands and shoulders.[531] But the serpent is also often explicitly named in the _Ṛigvedas_ as a monster which keeps back the waters, and which is killed by Indras. The serpent, the first-born of the serpents, was lying in the mountain;[532] he was lying under his mother,[533] he was keeping the waters, his wives, shut up, as a miser his treasure, or a robber the stolen cows;[534] a miser or rich robber[535] resembling a magician, he staid enclosed in a cavern, and kept the waters in it;[536] he lay down and perhaps slept;[537] he lay near the seven torrents;[538] Indras arouses him;[539] in another hymn, however, the serpent, making a loud noise, provokes Indras, and comes against him.[540] When Indras kills the serpent with the thunderbolt, or else crushes it under his foot, or burns it, he opens the torrent of the waters and causes it to flow out towards the sea; he makes the sun be born, and finds the cows;[541] he destroys the machinations of the sorcerer, generates the sun, the day, and the dawn, removes every enemy to a distance,[542] makes the serpent's trunk fall to the earth, like a tree cut down by axes, or torn up by the roots,[543] and (as in Russian stories the hero, after having cut the monster's head off, throws his trunk into the sea) over the killed monster, now fallen, the waters which make joyful pass;[544] the gods, who have given Indras three hundred oxen to eat (according to another hymn, only one hundred), and three lakes of ambrosia to drink, that he might be able to vanquish Ahis, are joyful at the victory gained by Indras over the serpent, with their wives and with the birds; not only this, but the women, the wives of the gods, compose on this occasion a hymn to Indras.[545]