The Dagda: The Irish Wind Harvester Part 1 of 2

On the surface, the Irish god the Dagda has no very clear parallel in Vedic myth, and in general has proven to be controversial and mysterious to interpreters who would seek to shoehorn him into a typical Indo-European mythological framework. Some scholars have recognized similarities between Dagda and gods such as Thor – both gods having unmatched strength, comically large appetites, battling water monsters and having a role in bringing rains to the crops. Others have pointed out obvious incompatibilities of the two as well – linguistically Thor's name (meaning “thunder”) makes him a part of the divine grouping known as “Thunderers,” while Tuireann rather than Dagda carries the Thunderer's name in the Irish myths, Dagda is the Father god while Thor is not, Dagda is a druid warrior while Thor is only a warrior, among many other mythological differences. 

However, there is a lens through which we can justify the core linkage between the Dagda and Thor while recognizing also that another archetype is more fully at play here. This involves understanding the Indo-European wind god – who Mircea Eliade more vividly calls the “tornado god” – that deity known to the Vedics as Vayu. 

Just as the first and third functions have two representative deities who form a partnership or duad (Mitra-Varuna, for example), in a similar way the second function has for its exemplars the two contrasting warrior gods – in Vedic myth and hymn: Indra and Vayu. Dumezil describes their contrast as the same as that seen between Achilles and Hercules, calling the first “the chivalrous,” and the second “the brutal.” Arjuna, incarnation of Indra, and Achilles in similar fashion, are depicted as brooding figures, rather intellectually sensitive, hanging back from the events of battle for a time, and yet in the crucial moments leading the vanguard of military generals and victorious in key one-on-one battles that turn the tide of the war (i.e. Achilles over Hector, Arjuna over Bhishma and Karna). Bhima – incarnation of Vayu – like Hercules, is defined by his brute strength (which is paired with comically massive appetite), and he is in general a loyal and unfazed soldier, performing great military feats with steadfast effectiveness.

By the time of the rise to supremacy of Indra to which the Rig Veda bears witness, Vayu had greatly receded in importance and had largely been neglected by the prominent rishis. There are fewer than ten full hymns to Vayu in the Rig Veda, leading many to write him off as an unimportant deity. This despite the fact that he is one of the five Pandavas in the Mahabharata who seem to have represented the archaic primary gods. 

As Dumezil puts it, “the role of Vayu within the warrior function...is very nearly effaced in the Veda” (Destiny of the Warrior, Dumezil, 73). But more than simply receding and vanishing, Vayu's mythos was rather absorbed by the inexorably expanding figure of Indra, so that the Indra of the Rig Veda could properly be called Vayu-Indra, with an emphasis of course on the traits of Indra. What we have is “the two types of warrior god – represented in the pre-Vedic period, presumably, by Vayu and Indra, combined in the Rig Veda under the name of Indra, but attested as distinct in their sons, the heroes Bhima and Arjuna, up to the time of the epic” (90, Destiny of the Warrior, Dumezil). 

Speaking in almost the same way about Thor, Dumezil says he should more accurately be seen as a mix of the wind god and the thunderer. Dumezil goes as far as to say “except for his role as the god of thunder and lightning, Thor owes practically nothing to this aspect [the chivalrous-Indraic aspect], and, in contrast, develops the other [the brutal-Herculean/Vayu aspect].” (90, Destiny of the Warrior, Dumezil).

Thus our usual understanding of the “Thunderer” gods is an incomplete one. Among all of the paired duads of gods, and no less with the Wind/Thunder pair, there is an observable flow of characteristics from one to the other over time, often resulting in an amalgamation of the two, or at least in a wind or thunder god who has acquired parts of the mythos of the other while the other recedes more or less into the background. It is like the twin who devours and absorbs his brother in the mother's womb. For the Vedics, Indra rises and absorbs certain “wind” traits, Vayu is reduced and pushed aside. 

For the Germanics, Thor rises and absorbs, and a proper Germanic Indo-European wind god other than him is hard to identify (though we may speculate). In Ireland, however, Tuireann, the assumed Thunderer, is brought low and killed off, with very little left to us of him in the records of Irish worship or myth outside of the tale of he and his sons' deaths. Instead we have a prominent god the Dagda who has some mythic similarities to Thor, but who does not bear the typical thunderer's name (as the Irish Tuireann does instead) and who has numerous other key differences with the thunder gods Thor and Indra. We should be tipped off to further investigation then by the various strikingly Vayu-esque traits posessed by the Dagda.

Perhaps the first clue is the fact that the Dagda is the god who explicitly uses the wind in the myths. When Amergin's ship is attempting to land on Ireland's coast, it is the Dagda who summons his druidic wind to repel it. His famous “4-angled music” harp could also connect him with the idea of the 4 winds. More than this though, an analysis of his names appears very capable of supporting a wind interpretation.  

Dagda's Names

In Isolde Carmody's translation of the names, Dein translates as “swift” or “mighty.” Dictionary of the Irish Language (DIL) here gives “swiftness, speed, impetuosity, vehemence,” with the alternate meaning of “pure, clean, neat and powerful.” These hardly require argument, as the wind and the deity associated with it are universally known as swift and impetuous, as well as powerful. Later the Dagda is called “harsh and stern” as well as “hardy and resolute in moral quality,” the wind being famous for its harshness and the wind god for his exemplary resoluteness. 

Fer Benn Bruaich, which the Dagda calls his “lawful” name, Carmody translates as “man of the peaks and shores.” What do peaks and shores have in common besides the presence of wind? Bogail Broumide, Carmody interprets as “large lapped farter,” which certainly could be a comic description of the wind. Cerbaid Ceic means “cutting mountains,” and one could picture a sharp wind cutting once again through the high peaks. But, in fact, Vayu also has a prominent myth in which he literally cuts a mountain. 

In the Bhagavata Purana, at the request of the sage Narada, Vayu attacks the polar mountain, Meru, breaking off its summit with storm winds and throwing it into the sea. Hanuman, Vayu's son, also once tore up a mountain and took it with him in order to bring a healing herb to his dying ally Lakshman. “Great Lying Bag” (Rolaig Buile) I have a hard time seeing as other than the fabled bag of wind, like the one kept by the Greek wind god Aeolus; moreover, lies are often poetically compared to the wind, unstable and impossible to pin down or depend upon. Labair Cercce Di Brig, “Talkative Hen on the Hill,” continues the theme of noisiness on high locations. Oldathair Boith (“Great Father of Being”) and Athgen mBethai Brightere (Regeneration of the World of Dry Land) both fall in line with the Upanishadic notion of the Wind/Air as the master of life, and further than that we may picture the wind as the primary scatterer of seeds which bring new life to the world each year, fostering cyclical regeneration. 

In fact, Vayu in the Rig Veda is called “Germ of the world,” that which makes the world germinate, generate, and grow. Another name of the Dagda's is Rig Scotbe, which means “King of Speech,” and what is more vital to speech than the breath itself, the wind which we blow forth as spoken words? Dagda's title Eochaidh, commonly translated as “horseman,” gives no trouble to our comparison with Vayu. There is ample evidence in the Rig Veda that Vayu was strongly linked to horses, often said to be carried by a fleet of a thousand of them, often drawn in a chariot: “Come with thy team-drawn car, O Vāyu, to the gift, come to the sacrificer's gift” (RV, I.CXXXIV.1).

“Two red steeds Vāyu yokes, Vāyu two purple steeds, swift-footed, to the chariot, to the pole to draw, most able, at the pole, to draw” ((RV, I.CXXXIV.3).

“come Vāyu, to our feast, with team of thousands, come, Lord of the harnessed team, with hundreds, Lord of harnessed steeds!” (RV, I.CXXXV.1).

“Drive thou thy horses, Vāyu, come to us with love, come well-inclined and loving us”(RV, I.CXXXV. 2).

“Come thou with hundreds, come with thousands in thy team to this our solemn rite, to taste the sacred food, Vāyu, to taste the offerings” (RV, I.CXXXV.3).

“Harness, O Vāyu, to thy car a hundred well-fed tawny steeds,

Yea, or a thousand steeds, and let thy chariot come to us with might” (RV, IV.XLVIII.5).

The wind is here associated with horses due to its great speed and strength, the team of horses being the natural symbol of this combination. Besides this though, Eochaidh or Eochu are fairly common titles among the Irish gods and legendary figures, and could be interpreted as meaning something similar to chevalier or denoting a powerful king (a lord of horses, or the one who participates in the royal horse sacrifice, the Asvamedha).

Bhima: Incarnation of Vayu

The Pandavas, sons of the primary gods and so their mortal stand-ins in the Mahabharata (as Dumezil and Stig Wikander before him have pointed out), preserve much of the archaic mythos of their respective god-fathers. So it is the case with the Pandava warrior Bhima, the second born of the Pandavas, born as spiritual son and incarnation of Vayu when Kunti prayed to him for a son. Bhima is known as the strongest of all the Pandavas. He is said to have the strength of ten thousand elephants and to singlehandedly defeat all one hundred of the Kauravas in the Kurukshetra War, among other senior warriors, and on one day to slay one hundred thousand soldiers. He is a one man wrecking crew who is unmatched in raw power on the battlefield. 

Indra himself is said to not be able to subdue him in battle. He is also described as a figure giant in stature, the largest of the Pandavas. His appetite matches – one epithet names him Vrikodara, “wolf bellied.” Half of the food allotted to him, his brothers and their mother was eaten by him alone, the other half split between the remaining five family members. In one tale Bhima is sent into the forest with a great cart of food intended to lure in a menacing monster. The monster approaches and is distraught to see Bhima calmly eating the food. When he has finished his monster-sized feast, Bhima makes short work of the monster. 

In the end of the Mahabharata, one of the couple reasons Bhima is said to fall dead before reaching paradise is his excessive appetite. Likewise, the Dagda is described as a giant with unmatched strength, and his incredible appetite is illustrated in an episode just before the Second Battle of Moytura. The Dagda goes as an envoy to the Fomorians to ask for a truce, in order to buy time for his allies and to spy on the opposing army (Vayu too was known to take the role of messenger or envoy of the gods due to his unrivaled speed, and his son Hanuman was the one chosen to retrieve the healing herb from the Himalayas for Lakshman because no one else was as fast as him). 

The Fomorians pour a mass of food into a pit in the ground – “four score gallons of new milk and the same quantity of meal and fat[...]goats and sheep and swine[...]porridge” (Gods and Fighting Men) -- and tell the Dagda he must eat all of it or be killed, which he promptly does with his massive ladle, enjoying well the feast intended to mock him. Afterward he falls asleep. In a tale somewhat reminiscent of this, Bhima's rival and future enemy in war Duryodhana poisons his food as revenge for his failure to defeat Bhima in wrestling. The poison isn't able to kill Bhima but knocks him unconscious. Just as the Dagda eats the dirt and gravel with the food served him in the pit, Bhima is said to have “digested the poison with the food,” and just like the Dagda this results in him falling asleep or unconscious. 

After which, Bhima is thrown into the Ganges. In one version he has the good luck to sink down to the kingdom of the Nagas, whose king revives him and bestows on him his famed strength. In another, he is said to be bitten by snakes under water but to resurface unscathed: “The wicked son of Dhritarashtra gave poison to Bhima, but Bhima of the stomach of the wolf digested the poison with the food. Then the wretch again tied the sleeping Bhima on the margin of the Ganges and, casting him into the water, went away. But when Bhimasena of strong arms, the son of Kunti woke, he tore the strings with which he had been tied and came up, his pains all gone. And while asleep and in the water black snakes of virulent poison bit him in every part of his body. But that slayer of foes did not still perish” (Mahabharata).