Abstrakt
The association between Indra and the Maruts as his fighting troop has been well studied in scholarship on Vedic religion and mythology (Macdonell 1897, 80-81, Bhattacharji 1978, 131-3, Chakravarty, 1991, 611-636). Indra, the god of war and of lightning, goes to battle with his companions, who "rush with gleaming spears" (RV 5.55.1). The speed of the Maruts is also compared to that of Vāyu, the god of the wind. It is clear that they also assume some of the functions of Indra, their leader: they fly over the sky like clouds and their onslaught is compared to lightning and the thunderstorm. However, like their father, Rudra, they are also the singers of heaven and no one can match their poetic skills (RV 5.59.4.)
Stig Wikander (1938) identified the Maruts as the mythological image of the Indo-European youth warrior brotherhood (in German Männerbund) in Vedic India because they are described as a group of young warriors, all of the same age. However, Wikander's book is problematic because of his association with Nazi scholarship. It remains unclear how the weather aspect of the Maruts fit their other characteristics such as singing and healing. The controversial etymology connecting the Maruts with the Roman god Mars is equally problematic.
This paper argues that structural comparison between various Indo-European traditions is needed to explain the weather aspects of the Vedic storm gods. Building on established works on the relationship between complex sets of connections (Sanskirt bandhu) in the Vedic cosmos (Smith 1994, Proferes 2007), the paper uses Philippe Descola's (2013) anthropological theory of analogism to make links between the Maruts as the heavenly host of storm and the Vrātyas, the earthly warriors who identified with them on their raids. Using the theory of analogism facilitates going beyond George Dumézil's (1975) ideas on the relationship between Vedic and Roman religion to one that is more inclusive of the complexities of the Vedic cosmos with all its integral parts. The warrior brotherhood of the Vrātyas reflects the warrior traits of the mythical Maruts. Their atmospheric aspects are a reflection of the speed that is the ideal of young raiding warriors. Hence, the haste of the Maruts can be compared to the running Luperci of the Roman festival of the Lupercalia (Vuković 2023) and the migrant warbands that identified with wolves in the transitional period of the year (Anthony and Brown 2017), a time of storms that is crucial to such liminal rituals. The storm imagery of the Maruts is thus a result of a complex set of factors: their close link with Indra, the speed of running warriors, who identify with Maruts in their rites of passage, and the winter timing of such rituals.