Kadru Praises Indra to Save Her Sons
With her sons, the snakes, being scorched unconscious by the sun's heat, their mother Kadru turns her face to the sky. She does not plead. She begins to recite a litany of praise, naming the god who is the only one who can save them: Indra, the lord of storms.
Her sons lay scattered on the ground, their bodies limp, their senses gone. The sun’s relentless rays had beaten them into unconsciousness. Kadru, their mother, looked at them. Then she looked up.
She began to speak, her voice not a cry for help but a declaration of identity. She addressed Shakra — Indra, the king of the gods.
“O lord of the gods! I bow before you.” She named his victories: “O slayer of Bala! O slayer of Namuchi!” She named his form: “O thousand-eyed husband of Shachi!”
Then she stated the need plainly. “The snakes are being burnt by the rays of the sun. Save them with your showers.” She gave him the title that made the request not a favor but a duty: “You are our supreme protector.”
What followed was not a prayer but a mapping of a god’s domain. She did not ask him to become the rain; she told him he already was everything that brings it.
“O best of the gods! O Purandara! You can pour forth water in torrents.” She began listing his forms, the elements he embodied. “You are Vayu (the wind), you are the clouds. You are Agni (the fire). You are the lightning in the sky.”
She named the actions that defined him. “You drive the masses of clouds and therefore you are known as the dense cloud. You are the unparalleled thunder, you are the roaring clouds.”
Her praise expanded from the storm to the structure of all existence. “You are the creator and the destroyer of all the worlds. You are invincible. You are the light of all beings. You are the sun and the fire. You are supreme knowledge, you are wonderful. You are the king. You are the best of the gods. You are Vishnu, you have one thousand eyes. You are the God and the last refuge.”
Then she named him as time itself, measured in the smallest increments and the largest cycles. “You are the soma that is the most worshipped. You are the instants. You are the tithis (lunar days). You are lava and you are again kshana (smaller units of time). You are shuklapaksha (the bright lunar fortnight), you are krishnapaksha (the dark lunar fortnight), you are kala (time), you are kashtha (a moment) and you are also truti (the smallest unit of time). You are the year, the seasons, the months, the nights and the days.”
She named him as the world. “You are the beautiful earth with its mountains and forests. You are the bright sky with the sun. You are the great ocean and its waves, with whales, creatures that swallow whales, crocodiles and diverse other fish.”
Finally, she named him as the center of worship, the reason for ritual. “You are immensely famous. You are always worshipped by the wise, whose intelligence has been awakened, and the maharshis (great sages). You are the drinker of the soma juice that is offered at sacrifices with sacred incantations and other offerings. You are always worshipped in sacrifices by Brahmanas who desire the fruits.”
She ended with the source of his fame. “Your incomparable strength is praised in the Vedas. It is for this reason that the best of the Brahmanas, who are engaged in sacrifices, study the Vedangas (the auxiliary Vedic sciences) with great diligence.”
She had called down rain not by asking for it, but by describing the one who was rain, and wind, and cloud, and time, and the world — and, above all, the supreme protector of the snakes.