Battle of the Gods

The head of an asura outside a
monastery entrance in Angkor,
Cambodia. (Photo by yarowind)

According to Indian lore, devas and asuras were divine entities, basically gods, but the kind that fought wars and spent precious time and energy keeping each other at bay. The devas were the good guys, and the asuras the baddies. 

But if you go back, way back, to the earliest Indo-Iranian texts, there was a time when the asuras were on par with the devas. The devas supposedly ruled the natural world, the asuras the moral and social one. Somewhere along the way, as the texts evolved and new ones sprung up, the asuras became the villains. According to Hindu myths, they were wicked and materialistic. In Buddhism, asuras were said to lack self control and let their passions (wrath, pride, aggression) get the best of them.

These aren’t easy myths to reconcile, for the asuras are still considered deities in the Hindu pantheon, highly revering certain ones, including Agni (god of fire) and Rudra (god of wind). While King Indra ruled the devas, Varuna, the god of water, presided over the asuras, and the two were powerful rivals. (Think of Indra as the Hindu counterpart to Zeus in Greek mythology.) Both Indra and Varuna were thought to rule the sky and earth, but they represented opposing interests.

Researchers over the past few hundred years, and as recently as a decade ago, have made some startling discoveries about these legends. The ancient epic Hindu poem, Rig Veda, refers to Indra carrying his people across many rivers and lands to reach what is now Punjab in Pakistan and India, eastern Afghanistan, and the Upper Indus Valley. In recent years, archaeologists discovered that the forefathers of Indo-Aryans hail from a place in Central Asia, specifically in Turkmenistan. Russian and Turkmen archaeologists have dug up impressive artifacts from a civilization the original Aryans, including the devas and asuras, hailed from. Among the important finds: horse-drawn chariots with spoked wheels, fire altars, sunken bowls with traces of an ancient drink known as soma that’s mentioned in the Vedas, as well as remnants of horse sacrifices.

Archaeologists believe the Indo-Iranians first arrived at this spot in Turkmenistan around 4,000 years ago, drawn there because of the existence of an oasis. They left some time later, as major climactic shifts began to take place and the fertile delta they relied on dried up. Presumably that's what the Vedas refer to, about some among them moving east (towards modern-day Pakistan and India) and others moving west (Afghanistan and Iran). Many different communities evolved out of these migrations, each one putting down roots in the rich, fertile valleys and lands between Central and South Asia.

It’s impossible to say which of the civilizations from the various groups that migrated away are still buried and waiting for us to discover. But we do know these original Indo-Iranians (Aryans), wherever they went, took the concepts of the fire god and the stories of the asuras and devas with them. 

 Ahura Mazda is often depicted in ancient art as
performing the crowning ceremonies of kings, to show
both the divine blessing of the ascension and god’s
protection of the king. In this relief at Taq-e-Bostan,
Ahura Mazda crowns Khosrow II (at center), with
the goddess Anahita at left. Anahita’s name derives from
the old Indo-Iranian word for the goddess Harahvati (Persian)
and Saraswati (Sanskrit). (Photo by Philippe Chavin)

Only thing is, the legend of the devas and the asuras evolved much differently among the Persians than the Hindus. 

In the Gathas, the earliest Zoroastrian hymns, ahuras were followers of asha (truth) and daevas of druj (falsehood). Ahura being the Persian form of the Sanskrit word asura, Varuna became Ahura Mazda. Curiously, while Ahura means "truth," Mazda means “other.” Both cultures still consider fire and water as the main ritual agents of purity.

According to the Persian texts, the two factions had vast differences of outlook and perspective right from the get-go, the chasm between them perhaps widening to such an extent that the two groups eventually went their separate ways. There’s no mention of any specific wars or battles as in the Vedic version, but eventually, the daevas came to be understood as malign creatures (not even deities).

The Indian and Persian legends share many similar concepts though--manu as man, Saraswati or Harahvati as both a river and a goddess, soma or haoma as a sacred plant, yajna or yasna as worship and sacrifice, and so on. Both scriptures, the Hindu Vedas and the Zoroastrian Avesta, retell a few of the same myths and legends, though from differing points of view. In the Vedic version, Varuna and Indra agree to cooperate at the dawn of each new year to reestablish order. In the Persian legend, daevas were originally not considered hostile (they are in later versions) but rather only following a false path and possibly the wrong gods.

There are many more such fascinating intersections. According to author Michael Wood in his landmark documentary, The Story of India, and book by the same name: “The big picture…is that the ancestors of Aryans were part of a huge language group who spread out from the area between the Caspian and Aral seas 4,000 years ago, and whose language lies at the root of modern European languages, including English, Welsh, Gaelic, Latin and Greek, but also Persian and the main modern north Indian language.” (Check out Michael Wood’s work for many more such amazing discoveries.)

Wood makes a point about these remarkable legends that the following photo also illustrates.

In the Bangkok airport, a sculpture shows the asuras using Naga Vasuki,
the king of the serpents, to churn an ocean of milk along with the
devas (not shown) to extract ambrosia. According to Hindu mythology, and later Chinese and
Japanese mythology as well, Vasuki was one of eight great Naga kings.
(Photo by Sailko)

For generations, we may have considered these legends as merely old stories but as time goes on, we find that they are grounded in quite a bit of historical fact. And how powerful these two entirely separate belief systems are that they continue to thrive today, both rooted from ancient traditions that have influenced so many others. Doesn't it boggle the mind to see how interconnected we all are?