Ok, buckle up, this is going to be quite a ride🙂
Maruts came (to earth) along with Agni (fire) from above...
The other day I read a very interesting paper "Comets and meteoritic showers in the Rigveda and their significance" by R.N. Iyengar
Most Vedas interpreters agree that Maruts are deified moisture laden monsoon storm winds, turned into rain bringing deities armed with thunder and lightning. Even I agree with that and I even wrote this post, "Maruts" talking about this through analysis of this 7th c. Maruts relief, Sambor Prei Kuk, Kampong Thom Province, Cambodia.
But, the Mysore Palace edition of the Rigveda, which gives in 36 volumes an exhaustive introduction, the text, traditional meaning, ritual application, grammatical explanation, and the Sanskrit commentary of Sâyan says that: Vâyu (winds) and Maruts are distinctly different...
And so in the above paper, R.N. Iyengar proposes that Maruts were, in the oldest layers of Rigveda, a deified meteorite shower, resulting from a close encounter of Earth with a comet. And I actually agree with his proposal...
So...I can hear you ask, you believe that Maruts are deified storms and deified meteorite shower? Actually I do. It will all make sense at the end of this post. So read on...
Here are some things that Vedas tell us about Maruts, and which R.N. Iyengar interpreted as description of a meteorite shower, resulting from Earth's close encounter with a comet. You can find a lot more in his article. It's well worth reading...
Agni was born (among gods, in the sky) bright like the sun and was moving in the night sky along with smoke. After that Maruts were born with great commotion holding shining spears. Then the Maruts stood surrounding Agni with their lights.
Maruts then came (to earth) along with Agni from above. They are visible at a distance shining like stars. They come down in thousands to earth together. They are shaped like drops and are bright like fires. They gleam like serpents as they approach the earth.
They roar as they fly towards on the ground. The whole world is afraid to look at them during their brightened travel. They move/shake/crash the hills and mountains and disturb the oceans.
A flash of bright light, the sound of explosions - what witnesses report and cameras captured as a meteor broke apart as it entered the atmosphere...
They have an epithet "asurâh", which, apparently, means "one who throws". The material of the weapons of Maruts is made clear by Agastya in: "Far be from us, your impetuous shaft. Far from us be the stone you hurl". So Maruts are deities which "throw stones towards earth".
I love this in particular: They can bring "airless showers to deserts" (apprently, an intense meteoritic shower can make the target region airless for some time).
The author concludes that: Three broad phases can be discerned in the description of Maruts.
The first, probably the earliest in time, are hymns which express awe at the approach of Maruts. These also express a sense of fear that Maruts are prone to kill people on earth.
In the second group are prayers that the shower of stones may avoid the worshippers of Maruts.
The third layer contains hymns wherein Maruts are invoked to arrive at a prayer or worship.
It may not be wrong to conjecture that this trend should have been directly matching with the frequency of the storms of Maruts.
As Maruts were constant companions of Indra, the author concludes that originally Indra was the equivalent of the Celestial Agni and the personification of the comet which created the Maruts meteorite shower.
A point to be reconciled is the meaning of Maruts as storm wind deities in later literature. We guess, with the status of Indra getting downgraded in time to a mere rain god, Maruts always linked with Indra, were also brought down as wind deities.
This has happened notwithstanding the fact parjanya and vâyu are the independent rain and wind deities in Rigveda. One reason for this mismatch should be the absence of recognisable Indra and Maruts in the skies...
Important!!! I would beg to disagree with the last sentence...
Evidence for the evolution of the concept of Indra from the concrete to the abstract is found in RV itself. In the hymn (VI.21.4) the poet wonders: "Where the famous Indra is now located? Where he travels, among what people? What prayers summon him? Indra!"
In many hymns of RV Maruts are said to be the children of Rudra...The author concludes that "It is most likely that Maruts were thought to originate from a particular object or constellation in the sky, called Rudra".
This object, which has not been identified yet, could, according to the author, be planet Mars??? Cause Rudra is red and Mars is red...
Eeeeee....This makes no sense...Considering that he spends the whole paper talking about comets...Why Mars? Why not a comet?
I think that Rudra was originally another name for the same comet which the author thinks was named Agni and Indra. I mean in Rigveda Rudra was called He Who shines like [the] Sun, He Who shines like gold, He Who has [long] matted/braided hair...
Sadhu (holy man) ritual during the holy bathing for Magh Mela, an annual festival that celebrates the beginning of the universe...What does this remind you of?
I mean...
Anyway...Who's Rudra?
Rudra (the roaring one, the wild one, the terrible one, the red, burning one) is a Rigvedic deity who is praised as the "mightiest of the mighty" and described as "extremely terrifying".
Rudra is one of several deities identified with Agni, most likely the same celestial Agni, the comet, who was said to give birth to Maruts...
Rudra is also called asura (the one who throws). Actually he was called "The great asura of heaven"...Significant I think 🙂
He was so feared, that in Rigveda he was often not named and was referred as "asau devam" (that god) and was given the adjective śiva (shiva) in the sense of "propitious" or "kind".
Rudra is also called Śarva (the archer), Dhanvin (bowman) and Bāṇahasta (Armed with a hand-full of arrows) and bow and arrow are his essential attributes. RV declare that Rudra discharges "brilliant shafts which run about the heaven and the earth" (RV 7.46.3)...
I talked about another heavenly archer in my post "Invisible archer":
If arrows are shooting down from the night sky, there must be an [invisible] archer standing somewhere up there shooting them out of his bow...
Orionid meteorite shower
Orion
An example of an ancient "scientific" explanation for an annual natural event...
Even the gods were afraid of the strung bow and the arrows of Rudra, lest he should destroy them...Sounds familiar? It should. Remember my post "Apollo the great archer"?
Apollo armed with bow and arrows. Why?
"I will remember and not be unmindful of Apollo who shoots afar. As he goes through the house of Zeus, the gods tremble before him and all spring up from their seats when he draws near, as he bends his bright bow..."
Why was everyone so frightened of Apollo and his bow and arrows?
So, the Earth survived the near collision with the comet. It was most likely already broken into 3 really big bits as it approached Earth, which could be the reason why Rudra/Shiva has 3 eyes or 3 heads/faces. Three-headed Shiva, Gandhara, 2nd century AD.
As the comet passed by earth, comet either further disintegrated into many smaller but still big enough bits which could create the chaos described in Vedas...
These large comet bits fell on Earth causing all the death and destruction described in the Vedas. And then every following year the Earth flew through the comet's path full of debris which kept producing a meteorite shower full of destructive large meteorites.
Eventually, after who knows how many years, all the big bits fell down on Earth. And as time passed, the stories about the terrifying Rudra (the comet) and his murderous children Rudras (the large meteorites) turned from history to myths. 11 Rudras, Udayagiri Caves, c. 401 AD...
And now Rudra is indeed just the name for the area of the sky from which the Rudras/Maruts meteorite shower (still) emanates every year.
Important!!!
And the later Vedic texts corroborate the above points. The Taittirîya Brâhmana states that "There is only one Rudra and the innumerable thousands Rudra’s children, and that they are not seen any more but only remembered"...
At the end of his paper, R.N. Iyengar says: This raises the question whether Marut was a generic word for all types of meteoritic activity or it referred to particular types. This can not be answered definitively at present.
Well, I think it can. Here comes the interesting bit:
In his paper R.N. Iyengar talks about the fact that the Taittirîya Âranyaka, says that Rudras appear in the grîsma-rtu, the two month before summer solstice and the Maruts appear in the hemanta-rtu, the two months before winter solstice.
That would make Rudras = Aquarids meteorite shower which falls in May and Maruts = Orionids meteorite shower which falls in Oct/Nov, both result of the Earth crossing the debris full path of the Haley comet, which swings by Earth every 75 to 76 years.
And that would make Rudra the Halley comet...I talked about Halley comet in my post "Grandmother's clubs" and "Jack and the magic beans"...
Why was Orion seen by Ancient Greeks as a "the greatest hunter" armed with a cudgel (club)? And why do Bulgarians call Orion "cudgels (clubs)" and why do Serbs call Orion "Baba's (grandmother's) sticks" and all the stars "Baba's (grandmother's) cudgels (clubs)"?
Maybe because of this
Wow, amazing, we solved the identity of Rudra/Agni/Indra and the identity of Rudras/Maruts and we resolved the ancient dilemma whether Rudras and Maruts are one and the same or different. They are both...
Done and dusted...
Weeeeeeell...It all fits except for one tiny thing...
The above interpretation doesn't fit Indian climate and is therefore wrong...You know whose climate it fits? Mesopotamian. Perfectly...But that is a completely different archer...I explained it all in this in my post "Invisible archer" I already mentioned earlier...There the rains arrive when Orion appears in the night sky, right when the rains start, rains that kill drought caused by the sun of the dry season.
Hence, Great Archer killing Sun...I talked about this in my posts "Invisible archer" and "Moon god Nana/Sin"
An example of an ancient "scientific" explanation for an annual natural event...
So, we can't just take parts of Rigveda that describe Indra and Maruts as respectively comets and meteorite showers and ignore the other parts where they are clearly described as storm/rain deities directly linked with annual monsoon.
Every year, Indra and Maruts slay Vritra, the drought dragon. In India, Orionids mark the beginning of the dry season and Aquarids mark the end of the dry season. Neither of them can be Rudras/Maruts, the bringers of rain. Which means that Helley comet can't be Rudra/Indra.
So who were/are Rudra/Indra and Rudras/Maruts? I think that Rudra/Indra is deified comet Swift–Tuttle and that Rudras/Maruts are deified Perseids meteor shower. Why?
Perseids meteor shower peaks in Jul/Aug, the same time when the monsoon rains peak in India. This means that Rudras (meteor shower) can also be Maruts (thunderstorm shower)...
See I told you it will all make sense in the end...
The comet Swift–Tuttle, whose trail of debris is the source of the Perseid meteor shower, is on an orbit that makes repeated close approaches to the Earth–Moon system...
It seams that (at least) once, it came too close to the Earth, and this terrifying close encounter was eventually deified as the birth of Rurdra/Indra/Agni in the sky...
That we are onto something here can be seen from this:
The abode of Rudra is commonly regarded as in the north, while that of the other gods is in the east. From "Vedic Mythology" by Macdonell, Arthur Anthony. This sounds strange until you realise that: "To see the Perseids meteors, you should look up and to the north"...
In Rgveda Rudra is described as "armed with a mace"...Why? Maybe because mace/club looks so much like a falling meteor...I talked about this in my post "Jack and the magic beans" about "might smiters".
Baal with his battle mace...
But he is mostly seen as an archer, who is still there, shooting arrows that cause plague and other infectious disease...Rudra, just like Apollo, was believed to both inflict and cure infectious diseases...
I talked about this side of Apollo in my post "Apollo Sminthius"...
Coin depicting Apollo Sminthius (Apollo lord of the mice) with his plague causing bow and a mouse/rat at his feet. Minted in Alexandria, Troas/Troad. Around 300 AD. Currently in The British Museum, Department of Coins. London...
The peak plague/infectious diseases season is Jul/Aug, the peak Monsoon season and the peak Perseid meteor shower season...So this again points at Rudra being comet Swift–Tuttle and Rudras being Perseid meteor shower.
One other thing. In "The Presence of Siva" by S. Kramrisch we can read this about Rudra:
So Rudra is (directly linked to) Sirius. Which rises with the sun in Jul/Aug. At the peak of the Perseid meteor shower...
in "Vedic Mythology" by Macdonell, Arthur Anthony we can read that Rig Veda tells us about Rudra's widemouthed, howling dogs, who swallow their prey unchewed...Sirius is also linked to dogs and dog days. I talked about it in these posts:
When our mythologies were made out of animal calendar markers, Sirius, the Dog Star rose with the sun in Jul/Aug, when mating season of the old dog breeds began...
Egypt "Dog days", Mesopotamia "Tishtrya", India "The bitch of the gods"
And Sirius in Jul/Aug is finally linked to archers and bows and arrows, not just in India, where we find Rudra, but also in Greece (Apollo/Artemis). I mentioned Apollo the archer earlier.
I talked about Artemis, Apollo's twin seister, the archer in my post "Artemis Orthia"...
Mesopotamia (Ninurta/Ishtar, bow and arrow constellation). I talked about this in my post "The brightest star"
Egypt Sopdet=Satis
You know how everyone thinks that Inanna/Ishtar (Morning Star) is Venus and how I think that it was originally Sirius, and only later became Venus?
Well, it seems that Ancient Egyptians preserved the proof of this switch in their mythology.
I talked about Sopdet/Satis in my post "Sirius mother of Venus"...
China (Bow and arrow constellation)...
But also, I wonder...Do these Chinese legends have anything to do with the Comet too?
The legend about the 10 Sun Crows, depicted on a relief from the Wu family shrine, dated to 151AD.
The Fusang mulberry tree, the Sun Goddess Xihe hitching her Dragon Horse into the Sun Chariot, and Archer Yi who takes aim at the Sun Crows...
I talked about this in my post "Three legged crows"...
This might finally answer my question: Why was Sirius deemed so important that everyone seems to have tracked it? Maybe because it's heliacal rising announced the arrival of the Terrible Archer, who (at least for a while) terrorised people all over the world every Jul/Aug...
It also explains why rising of Sirius was announcing the beginning of the time of fires and why Sirius was called The Scorcher...
July/Aug is the hottest time of the year in the northern hemisphere, so that could explain it...But maybe the "Fire that descends from the sky" also had something to do with such Sirius's reputation...
Anyway...I think this is enough for tonight...
So, what do you think? For the end I just want to send my regards to Perseus...
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