Namuchi : in Rig-Veda, a demon associated with Vritra. He personifies man’s weaknesses & is slain by Indra with the foam of water. The legend of Namuchi is amplified by Vedic commentators, in the Shatapatha Brāhmaṇa & the Mahabharata.
... divider,—in thy high desire thou slewest him with light, O lord of the plenitudes, when here thou sentest rolling the head of Namuchi the destroyer, desiring a path for man’s journey. (8) Then indeed thou madest me the comrade of thy battle, when thou didst crush the head of Namuchi the destroyer and thou setst in action thy thunderstone that comes to us from thy luminous world and madest heaven and earth ...
... darkness all possibility of divine existence and divine action. And even when Vritra is slain by the light, fiercer enemies arise out of him. Shushna afflicts us with his impure and ineffective force, Namuchi fights man by his weaknesses, and others too assail, each with his proper evil. Then there are Vala and the Panis, miser traffickers in the sense-life, stealers and concealers of the higher Light and ...
... Devourers, Confiners, Dualisers, Obstructers, as their names indicate, powers that work against the free and unified integrality of the being. These Vritras, Panis, Atris, Rakshasas, Sambara, Vala, Namuchi, are not Dravidian kings and gods, as the modern mind with its exaggerated historic sense would like them to be; they represent a more antique idea better suited to the religious and ethical preoccupations ...
... have a psychological character and symbolism, then there can be no farther doubt about the profounder sense of the Vedic religion and ritual. Finally, if Vritra and his associated demons, Shushna, Namuchi and the rest appear when closely scrutinised to be Dasyus in the spiritual sense and if the meaning of the heavenly waters he obstructs be more thoroughly investigated, then the consideration of the ...
... tricks: RS 1,51,5 "With magic powers (Māyābhih) you blew away the possessors of magic powers (māyínah)..." I am afraid there is a strange misunderstanding here. True, the god who has slain Namuchi has taken away this Dāsa's "magic power", but that does not mean that the god did not himself possess his own Māyā. In the earlier verse 5 we are told that he, "with these his magic powers assailed ...
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