Indraniइन्द्राणी

Indrani is the wife of Indra, and she is also Shachi — a name that is not a name but a noun: śacī means power, capability, effective help.

The most quietly remarkable thing about her is in her husband's title. Indra's standing epithet is *Shachipati, lord of Shachi — which is to say that the greatest god of the Rigveda is routinely identified by reference to her. The usual direction of naming in Sanskrit is the other way round: Indrāṇī* is simply "Indra's". That both forms exist, and that his is the commoner in the hymns, is worth noticing before anything else.

She is a minor deity by hymn count and an outsized one in the material she does appear in. Three Rigvedic passages belong to her, and all three are unusual:

RV 10.86, the Vrishakapi hymn — a dialogue between Indra, Indrani and a monkey, bawdy and obscure, and among the most argued-over texts in the collection.

RV 10.145 — a charm for driving out a rival wife, attributed to her.

RV 10.159 — attributed to Shachi Paulomi, and spoken in the first person: I am the banner, I am the head; I am the one who decides; my husband shall follow my will alone.

And she has a substantial afterlife that most people have seen without identifying: as Aindri, she is one of the Saptamatrikas, the Seven Mothers, carved in a row on temple walls across India, riding an elephant and holding the thunderbolt.

A goddess made from an epithet. Indrani is, in the ordinary way of Sanskrit, simply the feminine of Indra — the pattern that gives Varunani, Agnayi, Rudrani and Bhavani. These "wives of the gods", the devapatnīs, are invoked as a group in the ritual and have little independent content.

Shachi is different. Śacī is an old and substantive word meaning power, skill or effective assistance, used in the Rigveda of Indra's own capability, and it becomes a name. That the goddess has both a derived name and a substantive one, and that her husband is titled from the substantive one, suggests she is not purely a grammatical shadow.

Paulomi. The Puranas give her a father: the asura Puloman, whom Indra kills — in some accounts precisely in order to marry her, and against her father's will. She is therefore an asura's daughter married to the king of the gods, which is a position with obvious narrative potential that the tradition mostly declines to develop.

The three Rigvedic passages. They do not fit together and are probably from different settings:

• 10.86 is a saṃvāda, a dialogue hymn, and belongs to a small group of dramatic hymns in the tenth mandala.
• 10.145 belongs with the Atharvan charm literature.
• 10.159 belongs with a handful of first-person women's assertions in the collection.

What they share is that Indrani in all three is assertive, unembarrassed and concerned with her standing, which is a consistent enough characterisation to be worth something.

Aindri and the Matrikas. Her most durable form. From roughly the Gupta period the Saptamatrikas — Brahmani, Maheshvari, Kaumari, Vaishnavi, Varahi, Indrani or Aindri, and Chamunda — appear as a fixed sculptural set, each carrying the attributes and mount of the god whose power she is. Aindri holds the vajra and rides the elephant. In the Devi Mahatmya they emerge from the great goddesses to fight Shumbha and Nishumbha's forces.

This is a genuinely important development: it is the mechanism by which the male gods' powers are transferred to female form, and Aindri is Indra's share of it. Chamunda is the exception in that set — she is the power of no male god — and has her own page.

Her decline. With Indra's own eclipse she loses her position; there is no independent Indrani cult in later Hinduism, and she survives in the Matrika panels and in a name.

In the Vedic material, almost nothing. She is described as fortunate in her husband, as beautiful, and — in her own hymn — as having many sons; the rest is speech.

As Aindri, a fixed and recognisable type. In the Saptamatrika panels she is identified by:

• the vajra, Indra's thunderbolt, in one hand;
• the elephant as her mount, usually shown small beneath her seat;
• often many eyes, following Indra's epithet sahasrākṣa, thousand-eyed;
• a crown and royal ornament, since her god is a king;
• a child on her knee or beside her, as the Matrikas generally have.

The Vishnudharmottara Purana and the Shilpa texts prescribe the set, and the panels follow them closely enough that Aindri can be identified at a glance anywhere in India.

Where to see her. Saptamatrika panels are among the most widely distributed sculptural sets in the subcontinent: at Ellora (caves 14, 16, 21), at Elephanta, at Aihole and Badami, in the Chausath Yogini temples, in Odisha, in Rajasthan, in Nepal, and in the matrika shrines of Karnataka and Maharashtra where they still receive worship.

Her order in the row. Aindri stands second-to-last, before Chamunda, in most sets, with Virabhadra or Ganesha closing the panel.

Indrani. The feminine of Indra; the wife.

Shachi / Sachi. The substantive name — power, capability — and the one her husband is titled from. Shachipati and Shachinandana are Indra's.

Paulomi. Daughter of the asura Puloman.

Aindri / Indrani the Matrika. Sixth of the Saptamatrikas, with the vajra and the elephant. Her living form, carved in temples across India and worshipped in the matrika shrines of the Deccan and in Nepal.

Aindri in the Devi Mahatmya. One of the shaktis who emerge to fight in the seventh and eighth chapters; her portion of that text is recited at every Navaratri along with the rest.

Devapatnis. She is invoked with Agnayi, Varunani, Rodasi and the other wives of the gods in the ritual formula, as a group of minor deities.

Jayanta and Jayanti. Her son and daughter in the Puranas; Jayanti is married to Shukra, which is how she enters the story of the sanjivani and Kacha.

Not Indrani the river, and not Shachi the Bengali name. Both are unrelated usages of the words.

In Nepal. Indrayani is one of the Ashta Matrikas of the Kathmandu valley, with her own temple and her own jatra, and is worshipped as a living goddess of the city.

The Vrishakapi hymn. RV 10.86 is a dialogue in about twenty-three verses between Indra, Indrani and Vrishakapi, the "man-ape" or bull-monkey, who is Indra's favourite. It is bawdy, obscure, textually difficult and probably comic, and translators have disagreed about it for two hundred years.

What is clear enough: Indrani is angry that Indra prefers the monkey's company to hers; she abuses Vrishakapi and threatens him; she asserts her own attractiveness and her sexual claim on her husband in explicit terms; Indra answers; the monkey answers; and there is some kind of reconciliation. The hymn's language is franker than anything else in the Rigveda and is usually softened or partly untranslated in older English editions.

What it demonstrates is that the collection contains a female voice that is aggressive, sexually explicit and funny, given to a goddess and preserved in scripture. That is worth knowing about the Rigveda whatever the hymn turns out to mean.

Her own declaration. RV 10.159, attributed to Shachi Paulomi:

The sun has risen, and my good fortune has risen with it. I have overcome; I am the conqueror. I am the banner; I am the head; I am the one who decides. My sons are slayers of foes and my daughter is radiant; my husband follows my will alone. I have made my rivals — my co-wives — inferior to me, and I am without a rival.

It is a short hymn of self-assertion in a woman's voice, and it is not a prayer: nothing is asked for. It is a statement of victory in a household.

The charm against a rival. RV 10.145 is attributed to Indrani and is a charm for removing a sapatnī, a co-wife: a plant is dug up and used, and the speaker asks to become the sole and paramount wife. It belongs to the Atharvan register of domestic magic, and this encyclopedia describes it and does not print it. It is also, read plainly, a document about the conditions of polygynous household life and the resources available to a woman inside it.

Nahusha. Her best story, from the Mahabharata's Udyoga Parva. When Indra, having killed Vritra, was afflicted by the guilt of brahmahatya and went into hiding, the gods installed Nahusha, a mortal king, in his place. Nahusha, holding Indra's office, demanded Indra's wife.

Shachi did not refuse and did not comply. Advised by Brihaspati, she asked for time; then she asked that he come to her in a palanquin borne by rishis, which she knew he would not resist. He had the sages carry him, grew impatient, and kicked Agastya to hurry him — and Agastya cursed him to become a serpent and fall from heaven. Indra was restored.

The story is entirely hers. She has no power to refuse a usurper who holds her husband's throne, and she defeats him by giving him exactly what he wants in a form that will destroy him. It is one of the sharpest pieces of narrative strategy in the epic.

No independent cult, and none is recorded in India.

What exists:

As Aindri, in the Matrika worship. The Saptamatrikas receive worship as a set in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha and Nepal, at matrika shrines and at the panels attached to Shiva and Devi temples. In many places offerings are made to the row as a whole rather than to individuals.

In the Devi Mahatmya. Aindri's part in the seventh and eighth chapters is recited at every Navaratri Saptashati path.

In Nepal. Indrayani is one of the Ashta Matrikas of the Kathmandu Valley, with a temple at Indrayani in Kathmandu and an annual jatra; the Ashta Matrika worship of the Newar tradition is living and substantial, and she is a full participant in it.

In the Indra festivals. Where Indra Jatra is celebrated in Kathmandu, and in the surviving remnants of the Indian Indradhvaja festival, she is present with her husband.

As a devapatni. Invoked in the ritual formula naming the wives of the gods.

As a name. Shachi and Indrani are given names in India and Nepal.

DharmSetu records these observances as practised and makes no claim about outcomes.

No temple is dedicated to Indrani in India.

Where she is present:

Saptamatrika panels. Ellora caves 14, 16 and 21; Elephanta; Aihole and Badami (Karnataka); Osian (Rajasthan); the Chausath Yogini temples at Hirapur, Ranipur-Jharial and Bheraghat; and Matrika panels in temples across the Deccan, Odisha and Central India. She is the figure with the elephant and the thunderbolt.

Matrika shrines of Maharashtra and Karnataka, where the Seven Mothers receive worship as a set.

Indrayani Temple, Kathmandu (Nepal) — one of the Ashta Matrika temples of the valley, with a living cult and an annual festival. This is the one place a temple bears her name.

Newar Ashta Matrika circuits. The eight mother-goddess temples that ring Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, walked as a pilgrimage.

Museum sculpture. Saptamatrika sets in the National Museum, Delhi, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai, and the state museums of Karnataka and Odisha.

As with Indra himself, whose temples are almost nonexistent, her presence in Indian religion is on the wall rather than in the sanctum — and, in Nepal, considerably more alive than in India.

A god named after his wife. Shachipati — lord of Shachi — is one of Indra's commonest epithets, and śacī means power. The greatest god of the Rigveda is habitually identified by his relation to a goddess whose name is the word for capability. Whatever the history behind that, it is not what one expects, and it should be registered against the standard account of Vedic religion as a men's affair.

Three unusual texts. The Rigveda contains, attributed to this goddess, a bawdy comic dialogue, a domestic charm, and a first-person hymn of triumph in a household. None of them is liturgical; none asks a god for anything; all three are about position within a family. Taken together they are among the very few places in the collection where the concerns of a woman's daily life are the subject rather than the background, and they are preserved without apology.

RV 10.159 in particular — I am the banner, I am the head, my husband will do as I say — is unlike anything else in the Rigveda. It has been read as a charm, as a boast, as a ritual formula for a wife, and as evidence about the position of women in the household. It should be read carefully and not romanticised: it is a hymn about defeating co-wives, and the household it describes is polygynous and competitive. But it is a woman's voice claiming authority, in the oldest text in the tradition, and it is there.

The Nahusha episode, and what it says about power without authority. Shachi cannot refuse the usurper — he holds the throne, and the gods have put him there. So she agrees to terms that she knows will destroy him. It is the classic strategy of the person with no standing and complete understanding of the situation, and the epic gives it to her admiringly.

And what she became. Indra fell, and she fell with him — there is no Indrani cult in India today, and no temple. What survived is Aindri, second from the end of the Matrika row, with a small elephant carved under her seat, on temple walls in every part of the country. The wife of the greatest Vedic god is now a figure in a set, identified by an attribute, worshipped collectively and rarely by name. Given what happened to Indra, she has done rather better than he has.