The Aindra Kāṇḍa · Chapter Overview
From The Sāmaveda — The Veda That Is Sung, taught by Acharya T Krishnatrey. This lesson is free to read.
<pre data-block="statement"> The Aindra Kāṇḍa is the second division of the Pūrvārcika and by far the largest — 352 verses, running from continuous mantra 115 to 466, more than half the whole Pūrvārcika. It is largest for a practical reason. The Pūrvārcika is a stock of yoni-ṛcas — seed-verses, each of which carries a melody — and the overwhelming majority of the singing on a soma day is directed at Indra. So the singers needed the most seeds here. Its material is drawn heavily from Ṛgveda maṇḍala 8 and from the Kāṇva and Gṛtsamada collections. And the Indra of these verses is not primarily the dragon-slayer of mythology. He is the god of the pressed soma and of the contest: satpati, "true lord"; śatakratu, "of a hundred powers"; the one turned toward us "as one turns a chariot", strengthened by the song itself. Twelve of its mantras follow. Watch for the places marked as variants — six of them read differently from the Ṛgvedic original, and those differences are the most interesting thing in this Veda. </pre>