Religious rituals must produce verifiable results, never performed from superstition or blind faith.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Prabhupāda: [taps microphone] Today Govardhanadhārī, Giridhārī, Lord Kṛṣṇa, today lifted the mountain. [bad audio] Demigods like Indra, Chandra, [taps microphone] ...according to Vedic literature there are. According to Vedic literature there are different demigods. Sometimes we will find in Greek mythology the gods of the water, gods of the thunderbolt.
These are not imagination. Actually they are facts. But due to our insufficient knowledge we do not know how the material nature is being controlled. So when Kṛṣṇa was on this planet and He was playing the part of a cowherd boy, and it was known to all over the universe that "God has come, taken incarnation, and He is on the earth planet, and He is at Vṛndāvana playing the part of a cowherd boy..." So as if somebody, if there is incarnation of God, somebody believes and somebody does not believe, when Kṛṣṇa was actually present on this earth, it is not that everybody understood that Kṛṣṇa was the Supreme Personality of Godhead, not even up to date.
Only few persons, the five brothers of the Pāṇòavas and the damsels of Vṛndāvana, only in the fingers' count, say, out of the whole population, say, hundred or two hundred men knew Him that He was the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Otherwise, everyone thought that "He is an ordinary man just like one of us, but most powerful. That's all." Similarly, the demigods in other planets, they also thought, "Oh, he's a foolish person. They are thinking of a cowherd boy as God," sophisticated, like that.
And especially Indra, the heavenly kingdom..., king of heaven. He was... He's very powerful, so he thought, "What god he has come? My God, He cannot come." This was some speculation.
Even Brahmā also speculated. But Kṛṣṇa wanted to show Indra that "Yes, actually I have come." So that incidence is today, Govardhana-pūjā. So, bhagavān api tatraiva baladeva-saṃyutaḥ apaśyan nivasan gopan indra-yāga-kṛtodyamān [SB 10.24.1] [Śukadeva Gosvāmī said: While staying in that very place with His brother Baladeva, Lord Kṛṣṇa happened to see the cowherd men busily arranging for a sacrifice to Indra.] Indra-yāga-kṛtodyamān. According to Vedic system, there are different types of sacrifices to offer respect and obediences to the demigods. Just like the sun is supplying light, the moon is supplying moonshine.
Similarly, Indra is supplying the cloud. Similarly, there are different demigods. And in the Bhagavad-gītā, devan ya yajayantī deva-bhavan—these things are described. In the Vedic literature it is prescribed that "You should satisfy these demigods by sacrifice, deva-yajan." So in the village of that Vṛndāvana, the father of Kṛṣṇa, foster father of Kṛṣṇa, Nanda Mahārāja and his associates, they were yearly performing the Indra-yajña.
Because they were agriculturist, they depended on rain, sufficient rains. And he had many cows. Nanda Mahārāja was a farm man. He is agriculture and cows.