Rigveda
The
Rigveda (
Sanskrit:
', a tatpurusha compound of ' "praise, verse" and
"knowledge") is a collection of
Vedic Sanskrit hymns counted among the four
Hindu religious texts known as the
Vedas. The Rigveda was likely composed between 1700â€"1100 BCE, making it one of the oldest texts of any
Indo-European language and one of the world's oldest
religious texts. It was preserved over centuries by
oral tradition alone and was probably not put in writing before
Late Antiquity or even the
early Middle Ages.
[The earliest surviving manuscripts date to the 11th century.]The Rigveda consists
[There is some confusion with the term "Veda", which is traditionally applied to the texts associated with the samhita proper, such as Brahmanas or Upanishads. In English usage, the term Rigveda is usually used to refer to the Rigveda samhita alone, and texts like the Aitareya-Brahmana are not considered "part of the Rigveda" but rather "associated with the Rigveda" in the tradition of a certain shakha.] of 1,028 hymns (or 1,017 discounting the
apocryphal ' hymns 8.49–8.59) composed in Vedic Sanskrit, many of which are intended for various sacrifical rituals. This long collection of short hymns is mostly devoted to the praise of the gods. It is organized into 10 books, known as Mandalas. Each mandala is comprised of hymns, called sÅ«kta, which are further comprised of individual verses called ', plural
. The Mandalas are by no means of equal length or age: The "family books", mandalas 2-7, are considered the oldest part and comprise 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 youngest 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),
' and '. 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
' is the Aitareya-Brahmana. The ' 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
"Agni I laud, the high priest"and the final
pada is
*10.191.4d
"for your being in good company"
Hermann Grassmann has though 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
[equalling 40 times 10,800, the number of bricks used for the uttaravedi: the number is motivated numerologically rather than based on an actual syllable count.], 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 deitiesThe chief gods of the
Rigveda are
Agni, the sacrificial fire,
Indra, a heroic god who is praised for having slain his enemy
Vrtra, and
Soma, the sacred potion, or the plant it is made from. Other prominent gods are
Mitra,
Varuna and
Ushas (the dawn) and the
Ashvins. Also invoked are
Savitar,
Vishnu,
Rudra,
Pushan,
Brihaspati,
Brahmanaspati,
Dyaus Pita (the sky),
Prithivi (the earth),
Surya (the sun),
Vayu (the wind),
Apas (the waters),
Parjanya (the rain),
Vac (the word), the
Maruts, the
Adityas, the
Rbhus, the
Vishvadevas (the all-gods), many
rivers (notably the
Sapta Sindhu, and the
Sarasvati River), as well as various further minor gods, persons, concepts, phenomena and items. It also contains 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
'.
*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 '.
*
Mandala 4 consists of 58 hymns, mainly to
Agni and
Indra. Most hymns in this book are attributed to
'.
*Mandala 5 comprises 87 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra, the Visvadevas, 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 ' family.
*
Mandala 6 comprises 75 hymns, mainly to
Agni and
Indra. Most hymns in this book are attributed to the
' 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 and Vishnu, and to others. Most hymns in this book are attributed to '.
*
Mandala 8 comprises 103 hymns to different gods. Hymns 8.49 to 8.59 are the apocryphal
'. Most hymns in this book are attributed to the ' 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
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
Translations
The
Rigveda was translated into English by
Ralph T.H. Griffith in
1896. Partial English translations by
Maurice Bloomfield and
William Dwight Whitney exist. Griffith's translation is good, considering its age, but it is no replacement for Geldner's 1951 translation (in German), the only independent scholarly translation so far. The later translations by Elizarenkova depends heavily on Geldner, but Elizarenkova's translation (in Russian) is valuable in taking into account scholarly literature up to 1990.
According to Indian tradition, the Rigvedic hymns were collected by
Paila under the guidance of
, who formed the Rigveda Samhita as we know it. According to the
, 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
literature described and interpreted the Rigvedic ritual.
Yaska was an early commentator of the
Rigveda. In the
14th century,
wrote an exhaustive commentary on it. Other
s (commentaries) that have been preserved up to present times are those by
,
and
.
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 1700â€"1100 BC
[Oberlies (1998:155) gives an estimate of 1100 BC for the youngest hymns in book 10. Estimates for a terminus post quem of the earliest hymns are far more uncertain. Oberlies (p. 158) based on 'cumulative evidence' sets wide range of 1700â€"1100. The EIEC (s.v. Indo-Iranian languages, p. 306) gives 1500â€"1000. It is certain that the hymns post-date Indo-Iranian separation of ca. 2000 BC. It cannot be ruled out that archaic elements of the Rigveda go back to only a few generations after this time, but philological estimates tend to date the bulk of the text to the second half of the second millennium.]. The text in the following centuries underwent pronunciation revisions and standardization (
samhitapatha,
padapatha). This redaction would have been completed in about the
7th century BC[Oldenberg (p. 379) places it near the end of the Brahmana period, seeing that the older Brahmanas still contain pre-normalized Rigvedic citations. The Brahmana period is later than the composition of the samhitas of the other Vedas, stretching for about the 9th to 7th centuries. This would mean that the redaction of the texts as preserved was completed in roughly the 7th century BC. The EIEC (p. 306) likewise gives a 7th century date.]. Writing appears in India in ca. the 5th century BC in the form of the
Brahmi script, but texts of the length of the Rigveda were likely not written down before the Early Middle Ages, in the
Gupta or
Siddham scripts, and while written manuscripts were used for teaching in medieval times, they played a minor role in the preservation of knowledge because of their ephemereal nature (Indian manuscripts were on bark or palm leaves and decomposed rapidly in the tropical climate) until the advent of the printing press in
British India. 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 memorization unparalleled in any other known society.
Puranic literature names
Vidagdha as the author of the Pada-text.
[The Satapatha Brahmana refers to Vidagdha Sakalya without discussing anything related to the Padapatha, and no grammatical work refers to Vidagdha as a padakara. But the Brahmanda Purana and the Vayu Purana say that he was the Padakara of the RV. The Satapatha Brahmana is older than the Aitareya Aranyaka. The Aitareya Aranyaka is generally dated to the 7th century BCE. Jha, Vashishtha Narayan. 1992. A Linguistic Analysis of the Rgveda-Padapatha. Sri Satguru Publications. Delhi] Other scholars argue that Sthavira Sak of the Aitareya Aranyaka is the padakara of the RV.
[The Rkpratisakhya of Saunaka also refers to Sthavira Sakalya. Jha, Vashishtha Narayan. 1992. A Linguistic Analysis of the Rgveda-Padapatha. Sri Satguru Publications. Delhi] 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. According to some scholars the geography described is consistent with that of the
Punjab (
Gandhara):
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 into
Indo-Iranian times, or the early 2nd millennium BC. Thus there is some debate over whether the boasts of the destruction of stone forts by the Vedic Aryans and particularly by Indra refer to cities of the
Indus Valley civilization or whether they hark back to clashes between the early
Indo-Aryans with the
BMAC (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex) culture centuries earlier, in what is now northern
Afghanistan and southern
Turkmenistan (separated from the upper
Indus by the
Hindu Kush mountain range, and some 400 km distant). In any case, while it is highly likely that 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[There is however mention of ApUpa, Puro-das and Odana (rice-gruel) in the Rig Veda, terms that, at least in later texts, refer to rice dishes, see Talageri (2000)] 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.
[The term "ayas" (=metal) occurs in the Rigveda, but there is no positive evidence that it refers to iron or not. "It should be clear that any controversy regarding the meaning of ayas in the Rgveda or the problem of the Rgvedic familiarity or unfamilarity with iron is pointless. There is no positive evidence either way. It can mean both copper-bronze and iron and, strictly on the basis of the contexts, there is no reason to choose between the two." Chakrabarti, D.K. The Early Use of Iron in India (1992) Oxford University Press] 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, Agni is cognate with Latin
ignis and Russian
ogon, both meaning "fire".
Some writers have traced
astronomical references[
1] in the
Rigveda dating it to as early as
4000 BC[summarized by Klaus Klostermaier in a 1998 presentation], a date well within the
Indian Neolithic. Claims of such evidence remain controversial.
[e.g. Michael Witzel, The Pleiades and the Bears viewed from inside the Vedic texts, EVJS Vol. 5 (1999), issue 2 (December) [2]; ; Bryant, Edwin and Laurie L. Patton (2005) The Indo-Aryan Controversy, Routledge/Curzon.]Kazanas (2000) 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 of course in diametral opposition to views in mainstream historical linguistics, which assumes a date as late as 3000 BC for the age of late
Proto-Indo-European itself.
Flora and Fauna in the Rigveda
The
horse (
Asva) 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.
[Talageri 2000, Lal 2005] The
peafowl (Mayura) and the Chakravaka (Anas casarca) are birds mentioned in the Rigveda.
The Hindu perception of the
Rigveda has moved away from the original ritualistic content to a more symbolic or mystical interpretation. For example, instances of
animal sacrifice are not seen as literal slaughtering but as
transcendental processes. The Rigvedic view is seen to consider the universe to be infinite in size, dividing knowledge into two categories:
lower (related to objects, beset with paradoxes) and
higher (related to the perceiving subject, free of paradoxes).
Swami Dayananda, who started the
Arya Samaj and Sri
Aurobindo have emphasized a spiritual (adhyatimic) interpretation of the book.
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, 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.
*
Friedrich Max Müller,
The Hymns of the Rigveda, with Sayana's commentary, London, 1849-75, 6 vols., 2nd ed. 4 vols., Oxford, 1890-92.
*
Theodor Aufrecht, 2nd ed., Bonn, 1877.
*
V. K. Rajawade et. al.,
Rgveda-samhita with the commentary of Sayanacarya, Pune, 1933-46, 5 vols. Reprint 1983.
*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.
*Latin
**F. Rosen,
Rigvedae specimen, London, 1830
*French
**A. Langlois, Paris 1948-51 ISBN 2720010294
*English
**
Ralph T.H. Griffith,
Hymns of the Rig Veda (1896)
*German
**Karl Friedrich Geldner,
Der Rig-Veda: Aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsche übersetzt Harvard Oriental Studies, vols. 33, 34, 35 (1951), reprint Harvard University Press (2003) ISBN 0674012267
*Russian
**Tatyana Ya. Elizarenkova,
Nauka, Moscow 1989-1999.
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
*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
*
Frawley David: The Rig Veda and the History of India, 2001.(Aditya Prakashan), ISBN 81-7742-039-9
*N. Kazanas,
A new date for the Rgveda Philosophy and Chronology, (2000) ed. G C Pande & D Krishna, special issue of Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research (June, 2001)
* 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.
Text*
Full text in Sanskrit with Devanagari (Wikisource)
*
Rig-veda at sacred-texts.comOther links*
Index of Hymns of Rig Veda*
Rig Veda Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute
*
Audio download links for Rig Veda
