Famous Temples in India

Puranas reference : Once Indra, the King of heaven was sitting with His wife Sachidevi and was being praised by the other demigods. At that moment, his spiritual master Brihaspati arrived. Being too engrossed in the material opulence, Indra did not notice the presence of his spiritual master and forgot to offer him respects. This offended Brihaspati who decided to teach Indra a lesson and immediately vanished from the assembly. Indra started to repent his behavior and immediately left to search Brihaspati for begging forgiveness and could not find him anywhere. Because of offending his spiritual master, Indra was defeated by the demons in a great war and lost all his opulence. Thus Indra and the other demigods approached Lord Brahma for shelter. Lord Brahma understood the entire situation and chastised the demigods for offending their spiritual master. Brahma then ordered demigods to accept Vishwarupa, the son of Twashta as their priest. They then performed a fire sacrifice under the priesthood of Vishwarupa. Vishwarupa then taught Indra, the Narayana-kavacha mantra by which Indra won over the demons and started enjoying the opulence of the three worlds.

 

Vishwarupa was affectionate towards the demons, so He would supply them the remnants of yajna (prasadam). When Indra learnt about this, he immediately beheaded Vishwarupa. Vishwarupa was a brahmana and thus Indra acquired the sin of killing a brahmana. Although he was competent enough to nullify this sinful reaction, he did not do so but distributed it amongst the land, trees, water and women. The land accepted one-fourth of Indra’s sin, thus a portion of land got converted into a desert. After Vishwarupa was killed, his father performed a yajna to kill Indra. While performing the sacrifice, Twashta chanted a mantra to increase Indra’s enemies. However he chanted the mantra wrong which meant demon whose enemy is Indra. Immediately from the yajna-kunda a fierce demon arose. Demigods were powerless in front of this demon. Seeing no other way, they worshiped Lord Vishnu to help. Being pleased by the demigods, the Lord advised them to approach Dadhichi Muni to beg the bones of his body. With the help of these bones, Vishwakarma made a thunderbolt which was invested by the power of the Supreme Lord. With this thunderbolt Vritrasura could be killed.

 

At the end of Satya-yuga and the beginning of Treta-yuga, a great war took place between the demigods and the demons. Unable to tolerate the power of demigods, all the demons fled away from the battle, leaving their commander-in-chief Vritrasura to fight alone. Seeing the demons flee, Vritrasura advised them the importance of fighting and dying on a battlefield. His advice did not stop them and fight. And he stood alone in front of the demigods. Soon Vritrasura began trampling them down. Unable to withstand it, Indra threw his club at Vritrasura. Vristrasura was such a hero, that he caught the club with his left hand and used it to beat Airavata, Indra’s elephant. Struck by the blow of Vritrasura, Airavata fell with Indra on his back.