Deities
Hindu Deities
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Vayu is wind and breath, and the same word, prana, does for both, which is why he matters far beyond the Vedic sacrifice. In the Kena Upanishad he is one of the gods sent to identify a mysterious presence and, like Agni, fails: told to move a blade of grass, he cannot, and learns that his power is not his own. He is the father of Bhima in the Mahabharata and of Hanuman in the Ramayana, and Madhva, founder of the Dvaita school, is counted his third incarnation, which gives Vayu a doctrinal position in that tradition that he holds nowhere else. He guards the northwest among the directional deities and is invoked in pranayama.
Facts
Attributions
Mythic AssociationFather of Bhima in the Mahabharata and of Hanuman in the Ramayana; Madhva, founder of the Dvaita school, is counted his third incarnation, giving Vayu a doctrinal position in that tradition he holds nowhere else. 1 Mythic AssociationIn the Kena Upanishad, Vayu is sent, like Agni, to identify a mysterious divine presence, and fails: told to move a single blade of grass, he cannot, and learns that his power is not his own. 1 Mythic AssociationThe Ramayana explains Hanuman's single greatest feat, his leap across the sea to Lanka, as an inheritance from his father: it is Vayu's own nature as wind passing into his son that lets him cross so vast a distance in one bound. 2 Practice
LineageThe epic Mahabharata names Vayu the divine father of both the monkey hero Hanuman and the Pandava strongman Bhima, giving the wind god's superhuman strength a direct genealogical line into two of Hindu epic literature's most celebrated heroes. 2 History
Historical NoteThe Mahabharata and Ramayana each identify Vayu as the divine father of a major hero, Bhima in the Mahabharata and Hanuman in the Ramayana, giving the wind god a genealogical role as progenitor of some of Hindu epic literature's most physically powerful figures. 2 Cult
Attributes and IconographyIn Puranic iconography he is depicted mounted on a deer or antelope and carrying a flag, an emblem chosen because a flag, like wind itself, is visible only through the motion it produces rather than through any form of its own. 1 Worship and PracticeGuards the northwest among the directional deities, and is invoked in pranayama, the discipline of the breath. 1 Sources
Textual NoteThe Rigveda praises Vayu as the first of the gods to taste the pressed soma offering, before even Indra, and describes him drawn across the sky in a shining chariot yoked to a team of swift horses. 3 Function
Domain / Function Attestation
Era of Attestation Veneration TodayActively venerated in a living tradition 1 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2 Origins
Origin of the NameVayu's name derives from a Sanskrit root meaning to blow, the same root that gives Sanskrit its word for wind generally, so that the god's name and the phenomenon he personifies are linguistically inseparable in a way not true of most other Vedic deities. 3 Position Profile
Key TextThe Rigveda calls Vayu the first among the gods to taste the soma offered at sacrifice, a privilege of primacy the text attributes to his role as the divine breath and life force that fills all living beings, making him in Vedic thought inseparable from the very act of breathing itself. 3 Learn More
Wind and Breath: One Word for Both
Vayu is wind, and also breath, and the same Sanskrit word, prana, does for both, which is why Vayu matters far beyond his modest role in the Vedic sacrifice, for breath is the life within the body as wind is the life of the world. A famous story in the Kena Upanishad takes his measure: the gods, puffed up after a victory that was really the work of brahman, the absolute, are confronted by a mysterious presence, and Vayu (like Agni before him) is sent to find out what it is; told to move a single blade of grass, the god of all the winds cannot budge it, and learns that his power was never his own.
Vayu is the father of Bhima, the strongest of the Pandavas, in the Mahabharata, and of Hanuman in the Ramayana; and the philosopher Madhva, founder of the Dvaita (dualist) school of Vedanta, is counted his third incarnation, which gives Vayu a doctrinal standing in that tradition that he holds nowhere else. He guards the northwest among the directional deities and is invoked in pranayama, the breath-discipline of yoga.
The Great Intercessor of Dvaita Theology
Vayu's unusual doctrinal elevation within Madhva's Dvaita school of Vedanta goes beyond simply being counted as the philosopher's own incarnation; within Dvaita theology proper, Vayu occupies a formal and structurally important position as the chief mediating figure between the individual soul and the supreme god Vishnu, understood as the most exalted among all liberated and unliberated beings apart from Vishnu himself, and as the being through whom devotion and grace most directly flow toward ordinary souls seeking release.
Madhva composed a hymn, the Vayu Stuti, dedicated specifically to praising Vayu in this exalted intercessory role, and Dvaita tradition holds that Vayu has taken three great incarnations at different points across cosmic history to assist Vishnu's devotees directly, as Hanuman in the Ramayana age, as Bhima in the age of the Mahabharata, and as Madhva himself in the current age, each incarnation serving as a devoted servant and helper of Vishnu or his devotees at a critical juncture. This threefold incarnation doctrine gives Vayu a continuous, active salvific role across the major eras of Hindu sacred history within specifically Dvaita theology that no other Vedanta school assigns him, and it reflects Dvaita's broader doctrinal emphasis on a strict, permanent hierarchy of being running from Vishnu at the summit down through Vayu as his foremost servant and intermediary, and then through further graded ranks of souls, a hierarchical structure that is one of the most distinctive and, among other Vedanta schools, most contested features of Madhva's dualist philosophy.
Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Vayu directly: "from the tamasic aspect of ahamkara. Vayu, the air element, carries sparsha together with shabda, sound, inherited from the stage before it, making sparsha the newest quality air specifically..."
Named as the presiding deity of the lunar mansion Swati.
Children
Hanuman's own description article: "He is the son of Vayu, the wind, which is why he flies." Independently corroborated by Vayu's own article the same batch: "Vayu is the father of... Hanuman in the Ramayana."
Worshipped In
Sources
1. Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.), Routledge, 2008VayuView the Source 2. An Introduction to Hinduism
3. The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India
Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, Oxford University Press, 2014View the Source History of Dharmasastra, Volume V
P. V. Kane, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1958cited for the presiding deity of the lunar mansion SwatiView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. VayuView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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