The Aryan Invasion Myth

[bwv]

it may be BS, its easy to come up with all kinds of links between ancient stories. but if Woden is documented at 400-500 AD among a wide range of Germanic tribes, which prior to that had no written records, its unlikely the god had been spread recently before in some evangelical wave.

The wikipedia entry under Indra says (& contradicts my other quote as it links Indra to Thor / Perkunas etc)

"If Indra as a deity is cognate to other Indo-European gods, either thunder gods such as Thor, Perun, and Zeus, or gods of intoxicating drinks such as Dionysos. The name of Indra is also mentioned among the gods of the Mitanni, an Indo-Aryan Hurrian speaking people who ruled northern Syria from ca.1500BC-1300BC.[2]
Janda (1998:221) suggests that the Proto-Indo-European (or Graeco-Aryan) predecessor of Indra had the epitheta *trigw-welumos "smasher of the enclosure" (of Vritra, Vala) and diye-snūtyos "impeller of streams" (the liberated rivers, corresponding to Vedic apam ajas "agitator of the waters"), which resulted in the Greek gods Triptolemos and Dionysos.
It was once supposed that Vedic Indra corresponds to Verethragna of the Zoroastrian Avesta. This idea was based primarily on the fact that the noun verethragna- corresponds to Vedic vrtrahan-, which is predominantly an epithet of Indra. The supposition that Indra corresponds to Verethragna is now controversial. While both vritra- and verethra- derive from the same root "to cover", the word verethra- is today understood to mean "obstacle". Thus, verethragna- is now understood to reflect "smiter of resistance".
Vritra does not appear in either the Avesta or in 9th-12th century books of Zoroastrian tradition. Since the name 'Indra' appears in Zoroastrian texts as that of an arch-demon opposing Truth (Vd. 10.9; Dk. 9.3; Gbd. 27.6, 34.27), it may be supposed that Verethragna was a way of reintroducing him in a favorable light."