Rigveda

The Rigveda (Sanskrit: ऋग्वेद ṛgveda, a tatpurusha compound of rik "praise, verse" and veda "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dedicated to the gods. It is counted among the four Hindu canonical sacred texts (shruti) known as the Vedas.

Today, this text is revered by Hindus around the world, primarily in India and Nepal. Its verses are recited at prayers, religious functions and other auspicious occasions.

Text

The Rigveda consists of 1,028 hymns (or 1,017 discounting the valakhīlya hymns 8.49–8.59) composed in Vedic Sanskrit, many of which are intended for various sacrificial rituals. This long collection of short hymns is mostly devoted to the praise of the gods. It is organized in 10 books, known as Mandalas. Each mandala consists of hymns, called sūkta (literally, "eulogy"), which in turn consist individual verses called rik, plural ṛcas. The Mandalas are by no means of equal length or age: The "family books", mandalas 2-7, are considered the oldest part of the Rigveda, being the shortest books, arranged by length, accounting for 38% of the text. RV 8 and RV 9, likely comprising hymns of mixed age, account for 15% and 9%, respectively. RV 1 and RV 10, finally, are both the latest and the longest books, accounting for 37% of the text.

Preservation

The Rigveda is preserved by two major shakhas ("branches", i. e. schools or recensions), Śākala and Bāṣkala. Considering its great age, the text is spectacularly well preserved and uncorrupted, the two recensions being practically identical, so that scholarly editions can mostly do without a critical apparatus. Associated to Śākala is the Aitareya-Brahmana. The Bāṣkala includes the Khilani and has the Kausitaki-Brahmana associated to it.

This compilation or redaction included the arrangement in books as well as orthoepic changes, such as regularization of sandhi (called by Oldenberg orthoepische Diaskeunase). It took place centuries after the composition of the earliest hymns, about co-eval to the redaction of the other Vedas.

From the time of its redaction, the text has been handed down in two versions: The Samhitapatha has all Sanskrit rules of sandhi applied and is the text used for recitation. The Padapatha has each word isolated in its pausa form and is used for memorization. The Padapatha is, as it were, a commentary to the Samhitapatha, but the two seem to be about co-eval. The original text as reconstructed on metrical grounds (viz. "original" in the sense that it aims to recover the hymns as composed by the Rishis) lies somewhere between the two, but closer to the Samhitapatha.

Organization

The most common numbering scheme is by book, hymn and verse (and pada (foot) a, b, c ..., if required). E. g. the first pada is

• 1.1.1a agním īḷe puróhitaṃ "Agni I laud, the high priest"

and the final pada is

• 10.191.4d yáthāḥ vaḥ súsahā́sati "for your being in good company"

Hermann Grassmann had numbered the hymns 1 through to 1028, putting the valakhilya at the end. The entire 1028 hymns of the Rigveda, in the 1877 edition of Aufrecht, contain a total of 10,552 verses, or 39,831 padas. The Shatapatha Brahmana gives the number of syllables to be 432,000, while the metrical text of van Nooten and Holland (1994) has a total of 395,563 syllables (or an average of 9.93 syllables per pada); counting the number of syllables is not straightforward because of issues with sandhi. Most verses are jagati (padas of 12 syllables), trishtubh (padas of 11 syllables), viraj (padas of 10 syllables) or gayatri or anushtubh (padas of 8 syllables).

Contents

See also: Rigvedic deities

The chief gods of the Rigveda are Indra, a heroic god who is praised for having slain his enemy Vrtra, Agni, the sacrificial fire, and Soma, the sacred potion, or the plant it is made from. Other prominent gods are Mitra-Varuna and Ushas (the dawn). Also invoked are Savitar, Vishnu, Rudra, Pushan, Brihaspati, Brahmanaspati, as well as deified natural phenomena such as Dyaus Pita (the sky), Prithivi (the earth), Surya (the sun), Vayu (the wind), Apas (the waters), Parjanya (the rain), Vac (the word), many rivers (notably the Sapta Sindhu, and the Sarasvati River). Groups of deities are the Ashvins, the Maruts, the Adityas, the Rbhus, the Vishvadevas (the all-gods). It contains various further minor gods, persons, concepts, phenomena and items, and fragmentary references to possible historical events, notably the struggle between the early Vedic people (known as Vedic Aryans, a subgroup of the Indo-Aryans) and their enemies, the Dasa.

Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari, early 19th century

• Mandala 1 comprises 191 hymns. Hymn 1.1 is addressed to Agni, and his name is the first word of the Rigveda. The remaining hymns are mainly addressed to Agni and Indra. Hymns 1.154 to 1.156 are addressed to Vishnu.
• Mandala 2 comprises 43 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra. It is chiefly attributed to the Rishi gṛtsamda śaunohotra.
• Mandala 3 comprises 62 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra. The verse 3.62.10 has great importance in Hinduism as the Gayatri Mantra. Most hymns in this book are attributed to viśvāmitra gāthinaḥ.
• Mandala 4 consists of 58 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra. Most hymns in this book are attributed to vāmadeva gautama.
• Mandala 5 comprises 87 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra, the Visvadevas (gods of the world), the Maruts, the twin-deity Mitra-Varuna and the Asvins. Two hymns each are dedicated to Ushas (the dawn) and to Savitar. Most hymns in this book are attributed to the atri family.
• Mandala 6 comprises 75 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra. Most hymns in this book are attributed to the bārhaspatya family of Angirasas.
• Mandala 7 comprises 104 hymns, to Agni, Indra, the Visvadevas, the Maruts, Mitra-Varuna, the Asvins, Ushas, Indra-Varuna, Varuna, Vayu (the wind), two each to Sarasvati (ancient river/goddess of learning) and Vishnu, and to others. Most hymns in this book are attributed to vasiṣṭha maitravaurṇi.
• Mandala 8 comprises 103 hymns to different gods. Hymns 8.49 to 8.59 are the apocryphal valakhīlya. Most hymns in this book are attributed to the kāṇva family.
• Mandala 9 comprises 114 hymns, entirely devoted to Soma Pavamana, the plant of the sacred potion of the Vedic religion.
• Mandala 10 comprises 191 hymns, to Agni and other gods. It contains the Nadistuti sukta which is in praise of rivers and is important for the reconstruction of the geography of the Vedic civilization and the Purusha sukta which has significance in Hindu tradition. It also contains the Nasadiya sukta (10.129), probably the most celebrated hymns in the west, which deals with creation.

Rishis

See also Anukramani.

Each hymn of the Rigveda is traditionally attributed to a specific rishi, and the "family books" (2-7) are said to have been composed by one family of rishis each. The main families, listed by the number of verses ascribed to them are:

• Angirasas: 3619 (especially Mandala 6)
• Kanvas: 1315 (especially Mandala 8)
• Vasishthas: 1267 (Mandala 7)
• Vaishvamitras: 983 (Mandala 3)
• Atris: 885 (Mandala 5)
• Bhrgus: 473
• Kashyapas: 415 (part of Mandala 9)
• Grtsamadas: 401 (Mandala 2)
• Agastyas: 316
• Bharatas: 170

Manuscripts

There are 30 manuscripts of Rigveda at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, collected in the 19th century by Georg Bühler, Franz Kielhorn and others, originating from different parts of India, including Kashmir, Gujarat, the then Rajaputana, Central Provinces etc. They were transferred to Deccan College, Pune, in the late 19th century. They are in the Sharada and Devanagari scripts, written on birch bark and paper. The oldest of them is dated to 1464.

Of these 30 manuscripts, 9 contain the samhita text, 5 have the padapatha in addition. 13 contain Sayana's commentary. At least 5 manuscripts (MS. no. 1/A1879-80, 1/A1881-82, 331/1883-84 and 5/Viś I) have preserved the complete text of the Rigveda. MS no. 5/1875-76, written on birch bark in bold Sharada, was used by Max Müller for his edition of the Rigveda with Sayana’s commentary.

Hindu tradition

According to Indian tradition, the Rigvedic hymns were collected by Paila under the guidance of Vyāsa, who formed the Rigveda Samhita as we know it. According to the Śatapatha Brāhmana, the number of syllables in the Rigveda is 432,000, equalling the number of muhurtas (1 day = 30 muhurtas) in forty years. This statement stresses the underlying philosophy of the Vedic books that there is a connection (bandhu) between the astronomical, the physiological, and the spiritual.

The authors of the Brāhmana literature described and interpreted the Rigvedic ritual. Yaska was an early commentator of the Rigveda. In the 14th century, Sāyana wrote an exhaustive commentary on it. Other Bhāṣyas (commentaries) that have been preserved up to present times are those by Mādhava, Skaṃdasvāmin and Veṃkatamādhava.

Dating and historical reconstruction

Geography of the Rigveda, with river names; the extent of the Swat and Cemetery H cultures are also indicated.

Based on Aryan Invasion Theory, the Rigveda was composed roughly between 1700–1100 BCE (the early Vedic period) in the Punjab (Sapta Sindhu), putting it among the world's oldest religious texts in continued use, as well as among the oldest texts of any Indo-European language. The text in its surviving form was redacted in the Iron Age (ca. 9th to 7th century BC). The fixed text was preserved for more than a millennium by oral tradition alone and was probably not put in writing until the Gupta period.

There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities between the Rigveda and the early Iranian Avesta, deriving from the Proto-Indo-Iranian times, often associated with the early Andronovo culture of ca. 2000 BC.

The Rigveda is far more archaic than any other Indo-Aryan text. For this reason, it was in the center of attention of western scholarship from the times of Max Müller. The Rigveda records an early stage of Vedic religion, still closely tied to the pre-Zoroastrian Persian religion. It is thought that Zoroastrianism and Vedic Hinduism evolved from an earlier common religious Indo-Iranian culture.

The Rigveda's core is accepted to date to the late Bronze Age, making it the only example of Bronze Age literature with an unbroken tradition. Its composition is usually dated to roughly between 1700–1100 BC. The text in the following centuries underwent pronunciation revisions and standardization (samhitapatha, padapatha). This redaction would have been completed around the 7th century BC.

Writing appears in India around the 5th century BC in the form of the Brahmi script, but texts of the length of the Rigveda were likely not written down until much later, the oldest surviving manuscript dating to the 11th century. While written manuscripts were used for teaching in medieval times, they were written on bark or palm leaves, which decomposed quicker in the tropical climate, until the advent of the printing press from the 16th century. The hymns were thus preserved by oral tradition for up to a millennium from the time of their composition until the redaction of the Rigveda, and the entire Rigveda was preserved in shakhas for another 2,500 years from the time of its redaction until the editio princeps by Müller, a collective feat of preservation unparalleled in any other known society.

Puranic literature names Vidagdha as the author of the Padapatha. Other scholars argue that Sthavira Shakalya of the Aitareya Aranyaka is the padakara of the RV. After their composition, the texts were preserved and codified by a vast body of Vedic priesthood as the central philosophy of the Iron Age Vedic civilization.

The Rigveda describes a mobile, nomadic culture, with horse-drawn chariots and metal (bronze) weapons. The geography described is consistent with that of the Punjab: Rivers flow north to south, the mountains are relatively remote but still reachable (Soma is a plant found in the mountains, and it has to be purchased, imported by merchants). Nevertheless, the hymns were certainly composed over a long period, with the oldest elements possibly reaching back to times close to the split of Proto-Indo-Iranian (around 2000 BC)

The bulk of the Rigveda was composed in the Punjab, even if based on earlier poetic traditions, there is no mention of either tigers or rice in the Rigveda (as opposed to the later Vedas), suggesting that Vedic culture only penetrated into the plains of India after its completion. Similarly, it is assumed that there is no mention of iron although the term ayas (metal) occurs in the Rig Veda. The Iron Age in northern India begins in the 12th century BC with the Black and Red Ware (BRW) culture. This is a widely accepted timeframe for the beginning codification of the Rigveda (i.e. the arrangement of the individual hymns in books, and the fixing of the samhitapatha (by applying Sandhi) and the padapatha (by dissolving Sandhi) out of the earlier metrical text), and the composition of the younger Vedas. This time probably coincides with the early Kuru kingdom, shifting the center of Vedic culture east from the Punjab into what is now Uttar Pradesh.

Some of the names of gods and goddesses found in the Rigveda are found amongst other belief systems based on Proto-Indo-European religion as well: Dyaus-Pita is cognate with Greek Zeus, Latin Jupiter (from deus-pater), and Germanic Tyr; while Mitra is cognate with Persian Mithra; also, Ushas with Greek Eos and Latin Aurora; and, less certainly, Varuna with Greek Uranos. Finally, both Latin ignis and Russian ogon, are cognate with Agni - meaning "fire" .

Some writers have traced astronomical references[2] in the Rigveda dating it to as early as 4000 BC, a date well within the chalcolithic period of Indus Valley Civilization. Claims of such evidence remain controversial. but are a key factor in the development of the Proto-Vedic Continuity theory.

N. Kazanas in a polemic against the "Aryan Invasion Theory" suggests a date as early as 3100 BC, based on an identification of the early Rigvedic Sarasvati River as the Ghaggar-Hakra and on glottochronological arguments. Being a polemic against mainstream scholarship, this is in diametrical opposition to views in mainstream historical linguistics, and supports the controversial Out of India theory, which assumes a date as late as 3000 BC for the age of late Proto-Indo-European itself.

It has been observed that the earliest extant chariot found dates to at most 2100 BCE (Sintashta-Petrovka, southern Urals), while the earliest Harappan seals showing a man over spoked wheels (possibly symbolizing chariots) can be dated no older than 1960 BCE. The references to chariots therefore limit the historical context to approximately 2000 BCE or less. This is further validated by the oldest acceptable dated horse remains in India (not ass or onager) being no older than circa 2000 BCE. Therefore from the archeological evidence any date earlier than 2000 BCE should be considered speculative.

Flora and Fauna in the Rigveda

The horse (Ashva) and cattle play an important role in the Rigveda. There are also references to the elephant (Hastin, Varana), Camel (Ustra, especially in Mandala 8), Buffalo (Mahisa), lion (Simha) and to the Gaur in the Rigveda. The peafowl (Mayura) and the Chakravaka (Anas casarca) are birds mentioned in the Rigveda.

Vedantic and Hindu reformist views

Since the 19th and 20th centuries, some social & spiritual reformers like Swami Dayananda, founder of the "Arya Samaj" and Sri Aurobindo have attempted to re-interpret the Vedas to conform to modern and established moral and spiritual norms. They moved the Vedantic perception of the Rigveda from the original ritualistic content to a more symbolic or mystical interpretation. For example, instances of animal sacrifice were not seen by them as literal slaughtering, but as transcendental processes.

The Sarasvati river, lauded in RV 7.95 as the greatest river flowing from the mountain to the sea is sometimes equated with the Ghaggar-Hakra river, which went dry perhaps before 2600 BC or certainly before 1900 BC. Others argue that the Sarasvati was originally the Helmand in Afghanistan. These questions are tied to the debate about the Indo-Aryan migration (termed "Aryan Invasion Theory") vs. the claim that Vedic culture together with Vedic Sanskrit originated in the Indus Valley Civilisation (termed "Out of India theory"), a topic of great significance in Hindu nationalism, addressed for example by Amal Kiran and Shrikant G. Talageri. Subhash Kak has claimed that there is an astronomical code in the organization of the hymns. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, also based on astronomical alignments in the Rigveda, in his "The Orion" (1893) claimed presence of the Rigvedic culture in India in the 4th millennium BC, and in his "Arctic Home in the Vedas" (1903) even argued that the Aryans originated near the North Pole and came south during the Ice Age.

Editions

• editio princeps: Friedrich Max Müller, The Hymns of the Rigveda, with Sayana's commentary, London, 1849-75, 6 vols., 2nd ed. 4 vols., Oxford, 1890-92.
  • reprint, ed. V. K. Rajawade et al., Pune, 1933-46, 5 vols. Reprint 1983.
• Theodor Aufrecht, 2nd ed., Bonn, 1877.
• B. van Nooten und G. Holland, Rig Veda, a metrically restored text, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1994.

Translations

The first published translation of any portion of the Rigveda in any Western language was into Latin, by Friedrich August Rosen (Rigvedae specimen, London 1830). Predating Müller's editio princeps of the text, Rosen was working from manuscripts brought back from India by Colebrooke.

H. H. Wilson was the first to make a complete translation of the Rig Veda into English, published in six volumes during the period 1850-88. Wilson's version was based on the commentary of Sāyaṇa.

In 1889, Ralph T.H. Griffith published his translation as The Hymns of the Rig Veda, published in London (1889).

A German translation was published by Karl Friedrich Geldner, Der Rig-Veda: aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsche Übersetzt, Harvard Oriental Studies, vols. 33–37 (Cambridge, Mass.: 1951-7).

Geldner's tranlsation was the philologically best-informed to date, and a Russian translation based on Geldner's by Tatyana Yakovlena Elizarenkova was published by Nauka 1989-1999

A 2001 revised edition of Wilson's translation was published by Ravi Prakash Arya and K. L. Joshi. The revised edition updates Wilson's translation by replacing obsolete English forms with more modern equivalents, giving the English translation along with the original Sanskrit text in Devanagari script, along with a critical apparatus.

In 2004 the United States' National Endowment for the Humanities funded Joel Brereton and Stephanie W. Jamison as project directors for a new original translation to be issued by Oxford University Press.

Numerous partial translations exist into various languages. Notable examples include:

• A. A. Macdonell. Hymns from the Rigveda (Calcutta, London, 1922); A Vedic Reader for Students (Oxford, 1917).
• French: A. Langlois, Paris 1948-51 ISBN 2-7200-1029-4
• Hungarian: Laszlo Forizs, Rigvéda - Teremtéshimnuszok (Creation Hymns of the Rig-Veda), Budapest, 1995 ISBN 963-85349-1-5 Hymns of the Rig-Veda

Wendy Doniger issued a modern selection with a translation of 108 hymns, along with critical apparatus. A bibliography of translations of the Rig Veda appears as an Appendix that work.

Bibliography

Commentary

• Sayana (14th century), ed. Müller 1849-75
• Sri Aurobindo: Hymns of the Mystic Fire (Commentary on the Rig Veda), Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, Wisconsin ISBN 0-914955-22-5 [3]

Philology

• Vashishtha Narayan Jha, A Linguistic Analysis of the Rgveda-Padapatha Sri Satguru Publications, Delhi (1992).
• Thomas Oberlies, Die Religion des Rgveda, Wien 1998.
• Oldenberg, Hermann: Hymnen des Rigveda. 1. Teil: Metrische und textgeschichtliche Prolegomena. Berlin 1888; Wiesbaden 1982.
• — Die Religion des Veda. Berlin 1894; Stuttgart 1917; Stuttgart 1927; Darmstadt 1977
• — Vedic Hymns, The Sacred Books of the East vo, l. 46 ed. Friedrich Max Müller, Oxford 1897

Historical

• Lal, B.B. 2005. The Homeland of the Aryans. Evidence of Rigvedic Flora and Fauna & Archaeology, New Delhi, Aryan Books International.
• Talageri, Shrikant: The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis, 2000. ISBN 81-7742-010-0

Archaeoastronomy

• Kak, Subhash: The Astronomical Code of the Rigveda, Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal, 2000, ISBN 81-215-0986-6.
• Tilak, Bal Gangadhar: The Orion, 1893.

See also

• Vedas
• Upanishads

External links

• Rigveda - Nominations submitted by India in 2006-2007 for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register. (.doc format)

Text

• in Devanagari (Wikisource)
• in ASCII transliteration (Wikisource)
• in Devanagari and IAST (sacred-texts.com)

• mp3 audio download (gatewayforindia.com)[North Indian style, i.e., without meter or same meter, yeha swara]

Translation

• Ralph Griffith, The Rig Veda 1895, full text, (online at sacred-texts.com)

Interpretation

• Rig Veda (Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute)