This comes out more in Agni-worship than in Indra-worship, and will be treated below.

The snake or dragon killed by Indra is Vritra, the restrainer, who catches and keeps in the clouds the rain that is falling to earth.
He often is called simply the snake, and as the Budhnya Snake, or snake of the cloud-depths, is possibly the Python (=Budh-nya).[10] There is here a touch of primitive belief in an old enemy of man--the serpent! But the Budhnya Snake has been developed in opposite ways, and has contradictory functions.[11] Indra, however, is no more the lightning than he is the sun.

One poet says that he is like the sun;[12] another, that he is like the lightning (viii.93.

9), which he carries in his arms (viii.12.

7); another, that he is like the light of dawn (x.89.