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In Hinduism

In Hinduism, the Asura (Sanskrit: असुर) are a group of power-seeking deities, sometimes referred to as demons or sinful. They were opposed to the devas. Both groups are children of Kashyapa. The views of Asuras in Hinduism vary due to the many deities who were Asuras then later became known as Devas. The name is cognate to Ahura—indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary recognises the use of the term in reference to Zoroastrianism, where "Ahura" would perhaps be more appropriate—and Æsir, which implies a common Proto-Indo-European origin for the Asura and the Æsir. In entry 48 of his Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Julius Pokorny reconstructs this common origin as *ansu-.

Mahishasura Statue, Chamundi hills, near Mysore.

The negative character of the asura in Hinduism seems to have evolved over time. In general, the earliest texts have the asuras presiding over moral and social phenomena (e.g. Varuna, the guardian of Ṛtá, or Bhaga, the patron of marriages) and the devas presiding over natural phenomena (e.g. Ushas, whose name means "dawn", or Indra, a weather god).

In later writings, such as the Puranas and Itihasas, we find that the "devas" are the godly persons and the "asuras" the demonic. According to the Bhagavad Gita (16.6), all beings in the world partake either of the divine qualities (daivi sampad) or the demonic qualities (asuri sampad). The sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita describes the divine qualities briefly and the demonic qualities at length. In summary the Gita (16.4) says that the asuric qualities are pride, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness, and ignorance.

The Padma Purana says that the devotees of Vishnu are endowed with the divine qualities (viṣṇu-bhaktaḥ smṛto daiva) whereas the asuras are just the opposite (āsuras tad-viparyayaḥ).

In an Indo-Iranian context

The term asura is linguistically related to the ahuras of Zoroastrianism, but has in that religion a different meaning.

For one, the term applies to a very specific set of divinities, only three in number (Mazda, Mithra and Apam Napat). For another, there is no direct opposition between the ahuras and the daevas: The fundamental opposition in Zoroastrianism is not between groups of divinities, but between asha "Truth" and druj "Lie/Falsehood". The opposition between the ahuras and daevas is an expression of that opposition: the ahuras, like all the other yazatas, are defenders of asha; the daevas on the other hand are in the earliest texts divinities that are to be rejected because they are misled by "the Lie" (see daeva for details).

The notion of an "inverted morality" and the supposition that a dichotomy between ahuras/asuras and daevas/devas already existed in Indo-Iranian times is not supportable from either the Iranian or Indian perspective. Not only is such a dichotomy not evident in the earliest texts of either culture, neither the RigVeda's asuras nor the Gathas' daevas are demons. The demonization of the asuras in India and the demonization of the daevas in Iran both took place "so late that the associated terms cannot be considered a feature of Indo-Iranian religious dialectology".^[1]

The idea of a prehistorical opposition between the *asurás/*devás, originally presented in the 19th century but popularized in the mid-20th century had for some time already been largely rejected by Avesta scholars when a landmark publication (Hale, 1986^[2]) attracted considerable attention among Vedic scholars. Hale discussed, "as no one before him" (so Insler's review^[3]), the attestations of ásura and its derivatives in chronological order of the Vedic texts, leading to new insights into how the asuras came to be the demons that they are today and why the venerated Varuna, Mithra, Indra, Rudra, Agni, Aryaman, Pusan and Parjanya are all asuras without being demonic. Although Hale's work has raised further questions—such as how the later poets could have overlooked that the RigVeda's asuras are all exalted gods—the theory of a prehistoric opposition is today conclusively rejected.

Following Hale's discoveries, Thieme's earlier proposal^[4] of a single Indo-Iranian *Asura began to gain widespread support. In general (particulars may vary), the idea runs as follows: Indo-Iranian *Asura developed into Varuna in India and into Ahura Mazda in Iran. Those divinities closest related to that "asura [who] rules over the gods" (AV 1.10.1, cf. RV II.27.10) inherit the epithet, for instance, Rudra as devam asuram (V 42.11).

In Buddhism

Main article: Asura (Buddhism)

Asuras also appear as a type of supernatural being in traditional Buddhist cosmology.

See also

• List of Asuras
• Æsir-Asura etymological connection
• Asura (trance ambient artists)

References

External links

• Photos related to the depiction of demons at the Angkorian temples in Cambodia.
• Photos of the depictions at Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom in Cambodia of the Devas and Asuras churning the Ocean of Milk for the elixir of immortality.

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