Vritra

demonic sky Hindu single tradition · 5

Vritra, also known as Ahi, is a serpent or dragon, the personification of drought and adversary of Indra.

↻ synthesized from 5 sources

When

First attested
1500 BCE
Attested period
-1500 – 2020
Historical notes
Vedic period

Relationships

parent of
Sūrya
enemy of
Saraswati, Deva, Indra
created by
Tvashtr
child of
Danu

Expand to full subgraph →

Sources

Source passages

“Vritra or Ahi is a serpent or dragon, the personification of drought and adversary of Indra.”

#4678 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“Like Indra, Saraswati is also called a slayer of Vritra, the snake like demon of drought who blocks rivers and as such is associated with destruction of enemies and removal of obstacles. The Yajur Veda sees her as being both the mother of Indra (having granted him rebirth through healing) and also as his consort.”

#29017 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“The Mahabharata narrates that there was once a war between the devas and the asuras. The leader of the asuras, Vritra, was killed by Indra, and so his followers hid in the sea, causing the devas to be unable to find them.”

#29148 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“Danu was struck by Indra's thunderbolt after hearing him kill her son Vritra.”

#30442 · extracted by deepseek/deepseek-chat

“In order to have revenge for the murder of his son Vishvarupa, Tvashtr creates a demon called Vritra. However, when wishing him into existence, Tvashtr makes a mispronunciation in his incantation, which allows Indra to defeat Vritra.”

#40474 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001