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The Rigveda
The Rigveda is a monumental text in both world religion and world literature, yet outside a small band of specialists it is little known. Composed in the latter half of the second millennium BCE, it stands as the foundational text of what would later be called Hinduism. The text consists of over a thousand hymns dedicated to various divinities, composed in sophisticated and often enigmatic verse. This concise guide from two of the Rigveda's leading English-language scholars introduces the text and breaks down its large range of topics--from meditations on cosmic enigmas to penetrating reflections on the ability of mortals to make contact with and affect the divine and cosmic realms through sacrifice and praise--for a wider audience.
284 pages, Hardcover
Published March 10, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 15, 2024
Very good introduction. I appreciated the brevity of this work, as the Rgveda itself is intimidating in its length.
September 26, 2023
Notes
Rgveda manifests an extraordinary respect for the power of properly spoken speech. Its language became increasingly archaic and separated from ordinary speech: sruti, divinely inspired text without human agency. Preserving verbal form more important than meaning of the text.
How to ensure no corruption? Samhitapatha (continuous recitation) with sandhi.
Structure: 1000+ hymns in 10 mandalas. Within a mandala, first organized by god: Agni first, then Indra, then others in order of decreasing number of verses. Within the god, by length, within length, by meter (longer then shorter). Examining breaks in these patterns gives insight into later manipulation of text.
Agni as process of ritual: transformation seeking transcendence, and Soma as the result (samadhi?) or offering (bodhichitta dedication)
Asvins are not horse-riders, but charioteers whose 3-wheeled chariots are pulled by all beasts. Bulls, horses, falcons, geese - so can access all spheres, heavens, seas. Mountains. Speed and mobility: heroism of rescue (Rebha bound under the waters. Atri from an earth-cleft. Bhujyu from the sea). FInd the lost. Revive the old. Return sight to the blinded. They wed Surya, daughter of the sun (who elsewhere weds Soma). Duality-aspects? Heaven-earth, sun-moon, night-day. 2 Adhvaryus or 2 physicians. Dioskouroi. 1 mother, 2 fathers 1 mortal 1 immortal, so twice the potency and empathy to help humans. Reconciliation of opposites. Movement between polarities.
Maruts: troop of gods, natural phenomena, lightning/thunderstorm. brilliant/flashing. Mannerbund - young men banding together without other social ties. Father Rudra, mother Prsni a dappled cow.
Adityas: powers that order human society. Principal: Varuna, Mitra and Aryaman. Then: Daksha, Savitr, Surya etc. Sons of A-diti (without-binding) - offenseless.
Varuna - vrta: the vow.
Rajasuya: king becomes Varuna (authority) and Indra (war-leader). Prosperity, order (science, astronomy), justice. Though he complements Indra, isn’t as prominent in Rgvd because it is the outcome of the soma-rite, which belongs to Indra.
He is like Mitra. The ally. Mutual obligations. Can coexist with the Varuna.
Aryaman - cultural norms. Customs. Bhaga - fortune, prosperity. Ama - share, inheritance, material deservance. Daksha - skilled action of sacrificers.
Savitr - the impeller, sends moving things to rest too (Newton’s 1st law enforcer), chariot that is the starry night, Milky Way, associated with night and offspring (conception only at night) who commands beginning of day. So he is offered the Evening Pressing of Soma.
Surya: the eye of Mitra/Varuna. Overseer. Follows gleaming goddess Dawn across the sky.
Usas - the dawn. Benevolent femininity.
Vayu: fathered the Maruts - monsoons. Arrives at sacrifice with dawn. Has first right of Soma. clear, unmixed Soma. Arrives with indra on same chariot, and two of them share the first drink. Soma’s symbolic descent through the midspace. Vata - wind - lifebreath of the gods.
Heaven-Earth: dyava/prithvi: dyaus-pita zeus-pater jupiter. Separation of heaven-earth to create space for life is the primal cosmogonic moment by Indra.
Tvastar. Fashioner. Indra’s vajra, a cup to drink soma, created living beings. Indra, maybe his son, maybe killed him to obtain the soma.
3 Rbhus: took Tvastar’s soma cup and made it into 4 cups (Feanor). Made chariot of Asvins. Created 2 fallow bay horses of Indra. A cow. Rejuvenated their aging parents.
Pusan - only the Bharadvajas of Mandala VI favor Pusan. Draught animals are goats. Awl and goad. Porridge. Lead the astray. Husband/consort of Surya, the archetypal bride of the Rgved. So how did he manage to marry up so high.
Vishnu: in the middle Veda, becomes the embodiment of sacrifice itself and therefore can reach at power that exceeds the gods. But needs to wait until the Classical India age to become the supreme power. Indra’s ally, subordinate. In Mahabharata he is atindra: surpassing Indra. Associated with Maruts, allies of Indra. The 3 strides: with 3rd step disappears into a realm where none can follow. Wide-ranging: uruguay or wide-striding: urukrama. Handy in Indra’s fight with Vritra (that which confines/hinders). Together the 2 gods create open spaces.
Magic: great is that hidden much-coveted name by which you begat what has been and by which you will beget what is to be.
Indra - remover of obstacles - slayer of Vrtra (obstacle) who confined the waters, and Vala (a mountain cave confining cows).
Praise of Deeds vs Praise of traits. Deeds - mythology, but the gods are intimately familiar with their own actions, they want the story refracted through art: shattered narratives.
Slays boar Emusa, sometimes wit the help of Vishnu.
Godly powers manifested in variety of not just physical but also different powers of mind/spirit: will, intention, energy, capacity, mastery, dominance. Ability to act and impel humans, other gods even cosmic focrces to acknowledge authority.
Especially Agni: vidvan (knowing), cikitvan (perceptive, discerning), dhira (insightful) etc. Only 1 not anthropomorphized. Ever-varying shape. Yet he is the only 1 most human - has a full lifetime. Fire as birth, with kindling sticks as parents. Growth as youth in prime. Interaction with firewood as sexualized. Greying of old age. Has a mouth. Desires, intentions.
Indra, he who is known, now as before, as smiter of Vritra: actions in present are re-creations of past, made stronger by resonance and repetition.
Indra as maghavan - bounteous.
Rgvedic poets had no need for politesse, infirection in order to baldly demand their ask. That is the point of the sacrifice. The bluntness. Intentionality.
3.56.2: six burdens does the One, unmoving, bear. The cows have approached teh highest truth. 3 great females stand below as steeds: two were deposited in hiding, one has become visible.
Ring composition - uses repetition to focus attention on beginning and end of section demarcated. Particularly elaborate form of ring-composition, the Omphalos structure defines and focuses on center of the section. X.129. 1.105. X.28: V1 concern that Indra has not yet come to the yagna. 2-3, Indra arrives and argues what is successful vs unsuccessful yagna. Inner ring has Indra’s instruction through animal allegories: the hare swallowed the razor coming towards it. The omphalos - within these 2 rings - has Indra’s epiphany and self-description, like the Gita. Omphalos big part of Old Avestan Gathas.
Poetic repair: produces forward momentum. Sets a problem earlier in the hymn, then substitutes expected word, syntactic construction or thematic element for the problematic one. Expectations that propel you through the poem.
Cosmogonic speculative poems not to create a sober/consistent theory, but to start with conceptual premise what-if’s and work out implications to display intellectual boldness, creativity and reason. X129: origin of cosmos, anticipates post-Rgvedic brhmnas and aranyakas. Insight into how the ritual was understood.
Poetic self-reflection genre: poet speculates on his training, his tradition-inheritance from father, and his inferior skill compared to the great ancestors. VI.9.2: I do not know the thread, nor how to weave, nor what the wanderers weave at their meeting. Whose son will be able to speak as someone higher than his father? - but as poem to Agni continues - inspiration, skill comes from Agni, thus feeling the vision as guide. V.44: the hardest hymn in the Rgved - the poet pursues the older sonority of the seers by means of you (Agni/Soma).
Akhyana - dialogue. Lopamudra arguing with Agastya for intercourse who argues for joint ascetic practice.
Yami urging incest, Yama citing moral objection. Your brother does not want this, well-portioned one. Context: starts off with the funeral hymns, Yama/Yami were first mortals, Yama first to die so king of the dead.
X.159.4L without co-wives, smiting co-wives, conquering, overcoming, I have ripped off the luster of other women like the gifts of the feckless.
Atmastuti - praise of the self (by Indra mostly)
Danastuti - praise of the gift - couched in lower linguistic register than high style of divine praise.
Rgvedic obsession, like future classical Sanskrit, with images, similes are a break from styles of the older traditions like Avesta avan even form Homeric similes.
The chariot becomes the hymn that travels to the gods or the sacrifice that brings the gods. So poets become the fashioners of the chariot.
Rgvedic word for distress is amhas - narrowness/constraint - from which angst derives. Frequently expressed wish for gods to make broad space from narrowness. Need for open lands - livestock.
Rgveda manifests an extraordinary respect for the power of properly spoken speech. Its language became increasingly archaic and separated from ordinary speech: sruti, divinely inspired text without human agency. Preserving verbal form more important than meaning of the text.
How to ensure no corruption? Samhitapatha (continuous recitation) with sandhi.
Structure: 1000+ hymns in 10 mandalas. Within a mandala, first organized by god: Agni first, then Indra, then others in order of decreasing number of verses. Within the god, by length, within length, by meter (longer then shorter). Examining breaks in these patterns gives insight into later manipulation of text.
Agni as process of ritual: transformation seeking transcendence, and Soma as the result (samadhi?) or offering (bodhichitta dedication)
Asvins are not horse-riders, but charioteers whose 3-wheeled chariots are pulled by all beasts. Bulls, horses, falcons, geese - so can access all spheres, heavens, seas. Mountains. Speed and mobility: heroism of rescue (Rebha bound under the waters. Atri from an earth-cleft. Bhujyu from the sea). FInd the lost. Revive the old. Return sight to the blinded. They wed Surya, daughter of the sun (who elsewhere weds Soma). Duality-aspects? Heaven-earth, sun-moon, night-day. 2 Adhvaryus or 2 physicians. Dioskouroi. 1 mother, 2 fathers 1 mortal 1 immortal, so twice the potency and empathy to help humans. Reconciliation of opposites. Movement between polarities.
Maruts: troop of gods, natural phenomena, lightning/thunderstorm. brilliant/flashing. Mannerbund - young men banding together without other social ties. Father Rudra, mother Prsni a dappled cow.
Adityas: powers that order human society. Principal: Varuna, Mitra and Aryaman. Then: Daksha, Savitr, Surya etc. Sons of A-diti (without-binding) - offenseless.
Varuna - vrta: the vow.
Rajasuya: king becomes Varuna (authority) and Indra (war-leader). Prosperity, order (science, astronomy), justice. Though he complements Indra, isn’t as prominent in Rgvd because it is the outcome of the soma-rite, which belongs to Indra.
He is like Mitra. The ally. Mutual obligations. Can coexist with the Varuna.
Aryaman - cultural norms. Customs. Bhaga - fortune, prosperity. Ama - share, inheritance, material deservance. Daksha - skilled action of sacrificers.
Savitr - the impeller, sends moving things to rest too (Newton’s 1st law enforcer), chariot that is the starry night, Milky Way, associated with night and offspring (conception only at night) who commands beginning of day. So he is offered the Evening Pressing of Soma.
Surya: the eye of Mitra/Varuna. Overseer. Follows gleaming goddess Dawn across the sky.
Usas - the dawn. Benevolent femininity.
Vayu: fathered the Maruts - monsoons. Arrives at sacrifice with dawn. Has first right of Soma. clear, unmixed Soma. Arrives with indra on same chariot, and two of them share the first drink. Soma’s symbolic descent through the midspace. Vata - wind - lifebreath of the gods.
Heaven-Earth: dyava/prithvi: dyaus-pita zeus-pater jupiter. Separation of heaven-earth to create space for life is the primal cosmogonic moment by Indra.
Tvastar. Fashioner. Indra’s vajra, a cup to drink soma, created living beings. Indra, maybe his son, maybe killed him to obtain the soma.
3 Rbhus: took Tvastar’s soma cup and made it into 4 cups (Feanor). Made chariot of Asvins. Created 2 fallow bay horses of Indra. A cow. Rejuvenated their aging parents.
Pusan - only the Bharadvajas of Mandala VI favor Pusan. Draught animals are goats. Awl and goad. Porridge. Lead the astray. Husband/consort of Surya, the archetypal bride of the Rgved. So how did he manage to marry up so high.
Vishnu: in the middle Veda, becomes the embodiment of sacrifice itself and therefore can reach at power that exceeds the gods. But needs to wait until the Classical India age to become the supreme power. Indra’s ally, subordinate. In Mahabharata he is atindra: surpassing Indra. Associated with Maruts, allies of Indra. The 3 strides: with 3rd step disappears into a realm where none can follow. Wide-ranging: uruguay or wide-striding: urukrama. Handy in Indra’s fight with Vritra (that which confines/hinders). Together the 2 gods create open spaces.
Magic: great is that hidden much-coveted name by which you begat what has been and by which you will beget what is to be.
Indra - remover of obstacles - slayer of Vrtra (obstacle) who confined the waters, and Vala (a mountain cave confining cows).
Praise of Deeds vs Praise of traits. Deeds - mythology, but the gods are intimately familiar with their own actions, they want the story refracted through art: shattered narratives.
Slays boar Emusa, sometimes wit the help of Vishnu.
Godly powers manifested in variety of not just physical but also different powers of mind/spirit: will, intention, energy, capacity, mastery, dominance. Ability to act and impel humans, other gods even cosmic focrces to acknowledge authority.
Especially Agni: vidvan (knowing), cikitvan (perceptive, discerning), dhira (insightful) etc. Only 1 not anthropomorphized. Ever-varying shape. Yet he is the only 1 most human - has a full lifetime. Fire as birth, with kindling sticks as parents. Growth as youth in prime. Interaction with firewood as sexualized. Greying of old age. Has a mouth. Desires, intentions.
Indra, he who is known, now as before, as smiter of Vritra: actions in present are re-creations of past, made stronger by resonance and repetition.
Indra as maghavan - bounteous.
Rgvedic poets had no need for politesse, infirection in order to baldly demand their ask. That is the point of the sacrifice. The bluntness. Intentionality.
3.56.2: six burdens does the One, unmoving, bear. The cows have approached teh highest truth. 3 great females stand below as steeds: two were deposited in hiding, one has become visible.
Ring composition - uses repetition to focus attention on beginning and end of section demarcated. Particularly elaborate form of ring-composition, the Omphalos structure defines and focuses on center of the section. X.129. 1.105. X.28: V1 concern that Indra has not yet come to the yagna. 2-3, Indra arrives and argues what is successful vs unsuccessful yagna. Inner ring has Indra’s instruction through animal allegories: the hare swallowed the razor coming towards it. The omphalos - within these 2 rings - has Indra’s epiphany and self-description, like the Gita. Omphalos big part of Old Avestan Gathas.
Poetic repair: produces forward momentum. Sets a problem earlier in the hymn, then substitutes expected word, syntactic construction or thematic element for the problematic one. Expectations that propel you through the poem.
Cosmogonic speculative poems not to create a sober/consistent theory, but to start with conceptual premise what-if’s and work out implications to display intellectual boldness, creativity and reason. X129: origin of cosmos, anticipates post-Rgvedic brhmnas and aranyakas. Insight into how the ritual was understood.
Poetic self-reflection genre: poet speculates on his training, his tradition-inheritance from father, and his inferior skill compared to the great ancestors. VI.9.2: I do not know the thread, nor how to weave, nor what the wanderers weave at their meeting. Whose son will be able to speak as someone higher than his father? - but as poem to Agni continues - inspiration, skill comes from Agni, thus feeling the vision as guide. V.44: the hardest hymn in the Rgved - the poet pursues the older sonority of the seers by means of you (Agni/Soma).
Akhyana - dialogue. Lopamudra arguing with Agastya for intercourse who argues for joint ascetic practice.
Yami urging incest, Yama citing moral objection. Your brother does not want this, well-portioned one. Context: starts off with the funeral hymns, Yama/Yami were first mortals, Yama first to die so king of the dead.
X.159.4L without co-wives, smiting co-wives, conquering, overcoming, I have ripped off the luster of other women like the gifts of the feckless.
Atmastuti - praise of the self (by Indra mostly)
Danastuti - praise of the gift - couched in lower linguistic register than high style of divine praise.
Rgvedic obsession, like future classical Sanskrit, with images, similes are a break from styles of the older traditions like Avesta avan even form Homeric similes.
The chariot becomes the hymn that travels to the gods or the sacrifice that brings the gods. So poets become the fashioners of the chariot.
Rgvedic word for distress is amhas - narrowness/constraint - from which angst derives. Frequently expressed wish for gods to make broad space from narrowness. Need for open lands - livestock.
November 25, 2020
Everything you always wanted to know about the Rig Veda (*but felt too undereducated to approach the text). Includes a well chosen selection of hymns at the end that gives you a flavour of the work and also serve to illustrate various points brought up in the discussion.
October 23, 2020
Satisfied
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