Sachiशची

Sachi (शची) is the queen of the gods: consort of Indra, king of heaven, and known equally as Indrani, 'Indra's lady', and Paulomi, for she is the daughter of the asura Puloman. She appears already in the Rig Veda, where a striking hymn attributed to Sachi Paulomi is a plain declaration of a wife's ascendancy — sung in her own voice, claiming supremacy over her husband and her rivals. Among the Sapta Matrikas, the seven mother goddesses of later Hinduism, Indrani holds a permanent place, thunderbolt in hand, elephant beneath her.

The trial of Nahusha

Her great narrative comes from the epics. When Indra, polluted by the killing of Vritra, hid himself from the world, the mortal king Nahusha was raised to the vacant throne of heaven — and demanded Sachi as part of the office. Refusing to be inherited like furniture, she played for time and set a condition: let Nahusha come to her in a palanquin borne by the seven sages themselves. Drunk with rank, Nahusha agreed, and in his impatience kicked or goaded the sage Agastya with the words 'sarpa, sarpa' — 'move, move', but also 'snake'. Agastya's curse took him at his word: Nahusha fell from heaven as a serpent, and Sachi's fidelity restored Indra to his throne. The epics cite her alongside Sita and Damayanti as a model of the devoted wife who saves her husband by her own wit.

Presence

Sachi has little independent worship, but her name endures in Indra's own titles — Shachipati, 'lord of Sachi' — a rare case of the king of the gods being identified by his queen.