Indra et Ashura : les fils du Sage des Six Chemins

Indra and Asura: The Sons of the Sage of the Six Paths

3959 words | Reading time: 20 min

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The whole saga may come down to a quarrel between brothers. Indra receives Hagoromo's eyes, the first Sharingan, and a formidable chakra; Asura receives the body, the strength, and the endurance. The elder chooses power, the younger love, and the Sage rules in favor of the second. From that jealousy, fanned by Black Zetsu, come the Uchiha on one side, the Senju and the Uzumaki on the other, and a cycle of reincarnations that runs across the generations.

The original rivalry that explains the whole saga: the one between the two sons of the Sage of the Six Paths. Meet Indra and Asura Otsutsuki, the ancestors of a thousand-year-old hatred.

Contents

Hagoromo's Two Sons

Indra is the first son of Hagoromo Otsutsuki, Asura the younger; both are Kaguya's grandsons. The anime places their birth in the Land of Ancestors, where the Sage of the Six Paths returns once his travels are over, marries, and starts a family. His wife dies from the aftermath of Asura's birth (episode 464 of Naruto Shippuden). The two boys' childhood is peaceful nonetheless, divided between their father and the village children; once old enough to study, they learn ninshu under his guidance, in the hope that one of them will succeed him.

The two temperaments clash from the start. Indra is seen as a mature child, patient and protective, who takes praise modestly and holds himself to regular practice. Asura, for his part, is born without the slightest talent and proves impatient, unsure of himself before a brother who succeeds at everything. He admires his elder all the same: the fourth databook recalls that he studied relentlessly to be like him, and the anime specifies that he considered Indra the best possible successor, never seeking to claim the title for himself.

The anime turns that affection into a pivotal moment. Taizo, Asura's childhood friend, leads the group onto the trail of a giant boar ravaging the fields; the animal kills their dog Shiro, and Asura, unable to summon ninshu, finds himself at its mercy. Indra arrives in time and strikes the beast down with a lightning discharge channeled into his hand. It is by saving his brother that he awakens the Sharingan, a change Asura notices at once in his eyes (episode 465).

A horned elderly man in a long white robe stands in front of a hanging painted with a blue crescent moon and a yellow solar disk, flanked by two young men in gray outfits, each raising one hand.
Hagoromo before his two sons: the elder with long hair and the younger with short hair.

The Eyes and the Body

The manga sets the division between the two brothers in chapter 670. There Indra inherits his father's powerful chakra , his talent and his genes (page 12), along with his "eyes" and his spiritual energy. This ocular legacy takes the form of the Sharingan in him, presented as a form derived from the dojutsu of his grandmother Kaguya. It lets him read the flow of chakra, anticipate an opponent's movements, and paralyze him with a look.

Asura receives the other half, and much later. Lacking any remarkable ability, he is described as a late bloomer who, through years of relentless work, ends up awakening the power he too carried: what chapter 670 calls a "body chakra" (page 15), a life force and a physical energy that bring him up to the level of his genius brother. From this come his extraordinary endurance and his ability to sustain an effort no one else could hold.

That power reaches its full measure only when Hagoromo passes it on to him. Asura then receives the Six Paths Senjutsu, which his father can grant to whomever he chooses, and with it access to the five basic chakra natures and to Yin-Yang Release. The contrast fits in one line: the elder starts with everything, the younger builds everything — until he matches his genius brother, then defeats him on the day of the duel.

Close-up of an open eye whose red iris carries three black commas spaced around the pupil.
The three-tomoe Sharingan, the "spiritual" share of the inheritance that went to Indra.

Indra, the Inventor of Ninjutsu

Hagoromo's ninshu was not a fighting art but a practice of connection: the Sage handed out his chakra to link people's spiritual energies, so that they could understand one another without having to speak. The fourth databook, page 25, makes Indra the first to have drawn a weapon from it, that is, ninjutsu, once he was passed over for the succession and then worked on by Black Zetsu. Others followed his example, from then on linking their own spiritual and physical energies together instead of linking themselves to one another.

The anime moves the invention earlier and details how it works. Unable to shape his chakra as freely as his father, Indra goes through intermediate gestures: he gives the name "seals" to the hand signs that give chakra its shape, and the name "jutsu" to their effects. He creates the first Clone and Substitution Jutsu, forges primitive kunai and draws from them a rudimentary form of shurikenjutsu. Hagoromo himself is astonished by the scale of the discovery (episode 465).

The downside comes quickly. Proud of his discovery at first, Indra grows worried at seeing ninshu practitioners turn toward physical rather than spiritual growth, while his father objects that if he had not made this breakthrough, someone else would have. Posterity ruled otherwise: the invention of ninjutsu is credited with launching the shinobi era, but many attributed its authorship to Hagoromo, and Indra's name eventually faded away.

A young person with long brown hair sitting in front of a light wooden partition, wearing an off-white robe decorated with black commas; they hold out one open hand, palm up, above which a small orange flame floats.
Indra holds a flame in the hollow of his hand: in the anime, he is the one who draws the first jutsu from his father's ninshu, to the Sage's great astonishment (episode 465).

The Trial of the Two Villages

The trial that separates the brothers belongs to the anime alone: the manga says nothing about it. Hagoromo hands each of them a scroll naming a land ravaged by the fight against the Ten-Tails, leaving it to them to settle what remains; the successor will be chosen on results (episode 466). Both villages suffer from the same ill: a God Tree offshoot whose sap fertilizes the soil and builds up in the bodies of those who eat what grows there.

Indra settles it quickly. He uses the Sharingan to force the villagers to cut down the offshoot and find water, then returns alone, his mission wrapped up months before his younger brother's. Asura, for his part, leaves with Taizo, wins the trust of a village hostile at first by treating an injured woman named Kanna, goes down into a cave opened among the tree's roots — and runs into the elder, who refuses to let the offshoots be destroyed, the land having been barren and deadly before they came.

Unable to remove the cause, Asura takes on the consequence and starts digging a well. The villagers, won over by his stubbornness, end up digging with him, and he teaches them ninshu during the work. After a year, the water gushes out and forms a lake; and it is they, not he, who then burn the offshoots. The punchline comes in episode 468: Hagoromo learns that Indra's village nearly destroyed itself after he left, the inhabitants having torn each other apart over sharing the water.

A man crouching in a dark underground tunnel, wearing a white robe with black commas and a light cloth headband; he holds out at arm's length a sphere of bluish light from which long streaks of wind escape.
Asura underground during his trial (episode 467): where his elder brother forced the villagers to cut down the God Tree offshoot, he takes on the consequence and digs until he reaches water.

Hagoromo's Choice

The manga settles the scene in three pages. On his deathbed, Hagoromo names Asura, not the more gifted one but the one who holds love to be the path to peace, while Indra believes it a matter of power (chapter 462, pages 11 to 13). The fourth databook gives the father's exact reproach: Indra's inability to recognize others, and his fixation on strength. The anime backs that verdict with a demonstration, setting the results of the two missions against each other, and reveals to the elder that the village he had "helped" nearly wiped itself out after he left.

Indra's refusal does not come out of nowhere. For years, Black Zetsu approaches him alone and flatters him, going so far as to whisper that he could equal the Sage, even surpass him, then to convince him that the title is his by birth (chapter 681). The split is worth setting out: the manga places the decision on the Sage's deathbed, the anime well before his end — there Hagoromo passes his power to Asura the very next night and will live long enough to know his grandchildren.

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Under a full moon, a man with a forehead protector stands alone in the foreground, a crowd of dozens of identically dressed people lined up behind him.
What the father values in the younger son: the ability to hold a group together behind him.

The Duel That Founded the Hatred

The anime shows what the manga summarizes. Passed over, Indra leaves the village followed by two loyal companions, his two closest friends; when night falls, they offer to go plead his case with his father. He thanks them, then kills them, in tears and apologizing, in order to awaken the Mangekyo Sharingan — he had learned that his eyes gained power through loss. That same evening, he attacks the celebration held in Asura's honor, denouncing love as the foundation of ninshu and cooperation as a weakness (episode 468).

The balance of power is set by the manga. Indra unfolds a Complete Body Susanoo whose size dwarfs the surrounding landscape, and Asura counters with his own chakra avatar, a giant with three faces and six arms, equipped with Truth-Seeking Balls (Gudodama): five orbs in chapter 670, page 17, but nine in the anime. The anime adds a duel of elements as well, the black flames drawn from Indra's left eye giving way before his younger brother's spinning spheres.

It is the village's intervention that decides the outcome. Hagoromo asks the inhabitants to transfer their chakra to Asura, which completes the ripening of his power: in the anime, he then manifests Wood Release (Mokuton) and, combining it with senjutsu, a giant structure that puts Indra to flight. One last caveat for the reader: Six Paths: Kunitsukami, Amenomihashira, and Hinokagutsuchi are named neither in the manga nor in the anime — the three names come from the game Naruto: Shinobi Collection Shippu Ranbu.

Night scene: a colossal pale statue, seated, backed by a huge fan of dozens of arms with open hands, towers over a forest; in front of it, much smaller, a glowing purple figure seen from behind holds two curved blades spread apart.
The duel of the two brothers (episode 468): against Indra's purple chakra avatar, Asura sets a giant structure born of Wood Release and senjutsu, which puts his elder brother to flight.

Kanna, Taizo, and Asura's Descendants

Kanna is the villager Asura treats on his arrival, hurt in the scuffle that greets the two travelers taken for bandits. She hopes he will save her mother, sick like so many others, before learning that the God Tree is the cause. She is the one who rallies the inhabitants to the digging of the well, the one who learns ninshu from Asura during the year of work and discovers in herself a gift for healing chakra, to the point of being taught the Mystical Palm Technique.

Taizo, the childhood friend, deserves his two sentences too. He had gotten Asura to cut down trees without the village's approval, on the pretext of a shortcut that masked his real motive: obtaining remedies for his sick mother. Indra wanted to punish him for it; Asura got him out of his cell by facing his brother, and by taking a defeat. It is the mother, once healed, who then pushes her son to go with Asura on his journey — and there, after months of study, he will learn to summon chakra.

What follows plays out in the Land of Ancestors, a small country of farming villages whose architecture echoes that of the Yayoi period. Kanna follows Asura home, witnesses Indra's attack, and lends her strength to the defense; the two marry a few years later and have two sons and a daughter. Having become the Sage's daughter-in-law, she calls him "Father" and stands beside him at his death. Asura is credited as the ancestor of the Senju and Uzumaki clans.

A dimly lit wooden interior: an old man with closed eyes lies under a white cloth; a man with a light headband leans toward him, mouth open, while a young woman with long black hair and three children in white robes with black commas watch the scene.
Kanna and Asura's three children at the dying Sage's bedside: having become his daughter-in-law, she called him "Father" and stood beside him at his death (episode 468).

The Ancestors of the Clans

Indra's descendants found the Uchiha clan, heir to the Sharingan and to the "Curse of Hatred"; Asura's give rise to the Senju and Uzumaki clans. The manga insists on one point: neither clan knew why or how its hatred of the other had been born (chapter 462). The quarrel between the two brothers thus carries on from generation to generation, unbeknownst to those who wage it.

The Curse of Hatred is not a power but an ideal shared by the Uchiha, described as the counterpart to the Senju's Will of Fire: where one preaches self-sacrifice for the many, the other sacrifices the many for a few loved ones. The details of that shift, particular to each clan's history, play out long after the two brothers' deaths.

A tight group of black-haired men and women in dark cloaks with grave faces; one of the garments bears the red and white fan of the Uchiha clan.
The Uchiha clan, descended from Indra's line.

The Cycle of Reincarnations

The conflict is perpetuated through the reincarnation of the two brothers' chakra and souls in their descendants, Uchiha on one side, Senju on the other, and this for a thousand years. The mechanism has its rules: the cycle seems to resume only once both current reincarnations are dead. Asura is therefore not reborn at the death of Hashirama, but decades later, after the second death of Madara — the next two heirs then appearing almost at the same time.

Two reincarnations of the same brother are not interchangeable, however. Their chakra signatures remain distinguishable to a sensor: Madara, a sensor himself, could tell Hashirama's from Naruto's. Kaguya, for her part, recognizes her grandsons in Naruto and Sasuke thanks to her Byakugan (chapter 679, page 15). The manga even slips in a hereditary clue: the Mangekyo with straight tomoe appears tied to Indra's line, Madara having noted that he and Sasuke shared one despite its rarity (chapter 674, page 8).

The two halves eventually came together in a single man. Manipulated by Black Zetsu, Madara is the first reincarnation to unite Indra's chakra and Asura's within himself, and from it he awakens the Rinnegan, which is exactly what Hagoromo had warned against (chapter 671, page 7; chapter 681). Naruto, for his part, achieves what no previous reincarnation had achieved: ending the rift between the two lines, after defeating Sasuke, who comes to accept his ideals.

Naruto, arms crossed and gaze fixed, stands out against a black background; behind him a translucent blue figure with the same spiky hair takes shape.
Asura's line ends with Naruto, the last link in a chain of reincarnations.

What the Manga Says, What the Anime Adds

The manga's share is thin. The two brothers fit into a few passages there: the account of the succession and of the clans' hatred in chapter 462, the inheritance and the duel in chapter 670, the reincarnation and the warning about the Rinnegan in chapter 671, the manipulation by Black Zetsu in chapter 681, plus two late notes in chapters 674 and 679. None of these pages tells of their childhood, nor their mother's death, nor any deciding mission.

Everything else comes from the anime, and specifically from episodes 464 to 468 of Naruto Shippuden, aired from June 9 to July 21, 2016, in the "Kaguya Otsutsuki Strikes" arc. To it we owe the mother's death, the awakening of the Sharingan, the two missions, the murder of the two friends, Kanna and Taizo, as well as the elemental affinities: Fire Release (Katon) and Lightning Release (Raiton) for Indra, Wind Release and medical ninjutsu for Asura.

Two inconsistencies are worth flagging. The official subtitles of episode 421 have Hagoromo say that Madara and Hashirama were the first generation of his sons' reincarnations, when many others had preceded them: this is a translation error, corrected in episode 468. As for the pattern of Indra's Mangekyo, drawn as a spiral in its first appearance, it was later redrawn in the anime identical to Sasuke's.

A sepia portrait with the texture of engraved wood: a young man with long dark hair, mouth slightly open, whose two eyes have a concentric spiral for a pupil.
Indra's Mangekyo in its first appearance (episode 203): drawn as a spiral, the pattern will later be redrawn in the anime identical to Sasuke's.

The Names, from the Indian Pantheon to Shinto

Both given names come from the same religious background. "Indra" literally means "king of the gods" in Sanskrit, which is readily connected to his obsession with his father's title. The rivalry between the two brothers, then between their descendants, traces the opposition, in the Hindu and Buddhist religions, between the gods led by Indra and the Asuras. The roles there are reversed, however: in those traditions, the Asuras are the malevolent ones and Indra the benevolent one, while the series does exactly the opposite.

Asura's avatar bears the mark of that name. Its three-faced, six-armed silhouette echoes that of the asuras in traditional depictions — the same one behind the Asura Path of Pain. The name given to it, Six Paths: Kunitsukami, is Japanese, on the other hand: in Shinto, the Kunitsukami are the deities of the earthly world, as opposed to the Amatsukami of the heavens.

The rest of the naming follows the same vein. Amenomihashira, "heavenly pillar", takes the name of the pillar raised by Izanagi and Izanami; Hinokagutsuchi, the technique of Indra's left eye that closely resembles Amaterasu in both form and effect, comes for its part from Kagutsuchi, the Shinto god of fire. Even Kanna's given name refers to the Kanna era.

A man with a light cloth headband and a white robe decorated with black commas, both hands spread around a large translucent blue sphere in which several balls of light float, against a purple background.
The sphere Asura gathers here bears, outside the manga and the anime, the name Amenomihashira: the "heavenly pillar" raised by Izanagi and Izanami.

Summary Table

Aspect Details
Lineage Sons of Hagoromo (the Sage of the Six Paths), grandsons of Kaguya
Indra (elder) The "eyes": first Sharingan, powerful chakra. The path of power. Ancestor of the Uchiha
Asura (younger) The "body": strength, endurance, chakra. The path of love. Ancestor of the Senju and Uzumaki
The tragedy Hagoromo chooses Asura; Indra's jealousy, fanned by Black Zetsu
Reincarnations Indra → Madara → Sasuke; Asura → Hashirama → Naruto

FAQ

  • Which of Indra and Asura is the elder?
    Indra is Hagoromo's elder son, Asura the younger. Indra was the prodigy of the pair; Asura had to progress through effort.
  • Who inherited what between the two brothers?
    Indra inherited the "eyes" (spiritual energy, the first Sharingan, powerful chakra); Asura inherited the "body" (physical strength, endurance, immense chakra reserves).
  • Why did Hagoromo choose Asura, the less gifted one?
    Because Asura, able to build bonds and inspire others, embodied his philosophy of love and cooperation. Indra, focused on power alone, did not know how to bring others together.
  • What is Black Zetsu's role in their conflict?
    Black Zetsu, Kaguya's hidden will, fans Indra's jealousy after Hagoromo's choice, then keeps the conflict of the reincarnations alive for centuries in order to resurrect Kaguya.
  • What is the connection with Sasuke and Naruto?
    Through reincarnation: Indra → Madara → Sasuke, and Asura → Hashirama → Naruto. Naruto and Sasuke are the first pair to break the cycle of hatred.

In summary

Two brothers, two paths, one blood: Indra and Asura are the matrix of all of Naruto — until Naruto and Sasuke finally rewrite their story.

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