Sunda and Upasunda conquer worlds and exterminate sacrifices
Sunda and Upasunda, armed with a boon of invincibility, launch their conquest. They scatter the gods and then turn their fury on earth, hunting down and slaughtering every sage and priest to sever the cosmic order at its root.
When the constellation Magha was ascendant, Sunda and Upasunda set out to conquer the three worlds. Their daitya army, carrying clubs, pikes, and spears, marched under songs of victory. The brothers, who could assume any form, were drunk on the prospect of war. They flew to the habitation of the gods. The gods, knowing about the invincibility boon, did not wait. They abandoned heaven and fled to Brahma’s world.
Sunda and Upasunda took Indra’s world by terrible valor. They defeated the yakshas and rakshasas of the sky. They vanquished the nagas under the earth, the beings of the ocean, and all the foreign races. Conquest was not enough. To secure their rule over the entire earth, they identified the true source of their enemies’ strength. They told their soldiers, “The rajarshis and brahmanas, through sacrifices, feed the energy of the gods and injure us. We must destroy them completely.”
From the eastern shores of the great ocean, they spread out with this cruel purpose. The two powerful ones personally killed sacrificers and officiating priests wherever they were seen. In the hermitages of soul-controlled rishis, soldiers seized the sacred fires and threw them away. The boon was their shield: the furious curses of great-souled ascetics fell on them without effect, like arrows on stone. When the brahmanas saw their power was useless, they abandoned their vows and scattered in flight. The earth’s ascetics ran like prey before a predator.
The systematic destruction followed. Hermitages were ruined, ritual implements shattered and scattered. The universe was left empty, echoing like the hour of final dissolution.
With the sages in hiding, the asura brothers intensified their hunt. They changed forms to become instruments of terror: mad elephants with streaming temples, lions, tigers. They became invisible. In these guises, they slaughtered every rishi they could find.
The silence that followed was absolute. Sacrifices and Vedic recitation stopped. The brahmanas were gone. The earth, stripped of festivals, cried out in fear. Commerce died. The worship of gods ended. No sacred rites or marriages were performed. Agriculture and herding ceased. Cities and hermitages were destroyed. The ground was littered with bones and skeletons. Ancestral ceremonies were not observed. The sacred chants vanished.
The universe became terrible and loathsome. The celestial bodies—the moon, sun, planets, stars—and the dwellers of heaven watched these acts and were cast into depression. Having subjugated every direction through terror, Sunda and Upasunda, having vanquished every enemy, established their dominion from Kurukshetra.