Wendy Doniger Rig Veda Realia

Table Of Contents

CREATION
DEATH
THE ELEMENTS OF SACRIFICE
THE HORSE SACRIFICE
GODS OF THE SACRIFICE: AGNI AND SOMA
SOMA
INDRA
GODS OF THE STORM
SOLAR GODS
SKY AND EARTH
VARUNA
RUDRA AND VISNU
REALIA
WOMEN
INCANTATIONS AND SPELLS

REALIA

THE Rig Veda is a sacred book, but it is a very worldly sacred book. Nowhere can we find the tiniest suspicion of a wish to renounce the material world in favour of some spiritual quest; religion is the handmaiden of worldly life. The gods are invoked to give the worshipper the things he wants – health, wealth, long life, and progeny. This is not to say that there is anything superficial about Vedic religious concerns, but merely that these meditations stem from a life-affirming, joyous celebration of human existence.

Almost every hymn in the Rig Veda expresses at some point a wish for the good things in life, but some are primarily devoted to a celebration of these things, with relatively little attention to the gods who are supposed to provide them, and in others such worldly concerns eclipse what leaven of theistic devotion remains in them. Several of these hymns are devoted to the waters, the fluid element or Dionysian element that looms so large throughout the Rig Veda; the waters give renewal of life (10.9) and are invoked as goddesses (7.49). Water is at the heart of another hymn that combines the profane appreciation of the rains with a satirical fondness for priests (7.103); the sacrificial arena also provides the setting for another paean to the things that make life worth living (9.112).

It thus becomes evident that, rather than characterizing the ritual world of the Rig Veda as worldly, one might do better to characterize the non-ritual Vedic world as sacred: religion extends out into every aspect of life, not merely the official religious moments. Thus blessings are sought for the warriors’ arms (6.75) and for the gambler’s wish to break away from his compulsion (10.34), as well as for the benighted traveller in the forest (10.146).

10.9   The Waters of Life

1 Waters, you are the ones who bring us the life force. Help us to find nourishment so that we may look upon great joy.

2 Let us share in the most delicious sap that you have, as if you were loving mothers.¹

3 Let us go straight to the house of the one for whom you waters give us life² and give us birth.

4 For our well-being let the goddesses be an aid to us, the waters be for us to drink. Let them cause well-being and health to flow over us.

5 Mistresses of all the things that are chosen, rulers over all peoples, the waters are the ones I beg for a cure.

6 Soma has told me that within the waters are all cures and Agni who is salutary to all.³

7 Waters, yield your cure as an armour for my body, so that I may see the sun for a long time.

8 Waters, carry far away all of this that has gone bad in me, either what I have done in malicious deceit or whatever lie I have sworn to.

9 I have sought the waters today; we have joined with their sap. O Agni full of moisture, come and flood me with splendour.

NOTES

1. That is, as mothers give milk to their children.

2. The travelling singer asks to be sent to a house whose owner has been blessed, so that by sacrificing for him the singer may be renewed.

3. Agni within the waters is a common theme, to which the hymn returns in the final verse. Cf. 10.51.

7.49   The Waters, Who are Goddesses

1 They who have the ocean as their eldest flow out of the sea,¹ purifying themselves, never resting. Indra, the bull with the thunderbolt, opened a way for them;² let the waters, who are goddesses, help me here and now.

2 The waters of the sky or those that flow,³ those that are dug out or those that arise by themselves, those pure and clear waters that seek the ocean as their goal – let the waters, who are goddesses, help me here and now.

3 Those in whose midst King Varuna moves, looking down upon the truth and falsehood of people,⁴ those pure and clear waters that drip honey – let the waters, who are goddesses, help me here and now.

4 Those among whom King Varuna, and Soma, and all the gods drink in ecstasy the exhilarating nourishment, those into whom Agni Of-all-men entered⁵ – let the waters, who are goddesses, help me here and now.

NOTES

1. A reference to the cosmic ocean that is their source, in contrast with the earthly ocean that is their resting-point.

2. Indra opened a way for the waters when he killed Vrtra. Cf. 1.32.1.

3. That is, those that flow on earth, in contrast with the reservoirs of the sky.

4. Varuna is god of the waters and moves through the heavenly waters.

5. Cf. 10.51.

7.103   The Frogs

This unusual hymn moves on two parallel but sharply contrasting levels: as a naturalistic poem, it describes the frogs who are rejuvenated when the season of rains comes; as a sacerdotal hymn, it describes the Brahmins who begin to the voice, a sacred and creative force throughout the Rig Veda (which is, of course, a book of songs). For years scholars have argued about whether or not the comparison is meant to satirize the Brahmins (a possibility probably first suggested by the analogue with Aristophanes). But although the mood of the hymn is indeed cheerful, it is unlikely that the Rig Veda would contain material in actual criticism of priests in general. On the other hand, it may well be satirizing some priests (as, for example, the priests on the ‘other side’ of the agonistic sacrifice). What makes the poem a tour de force is that every verse applies simultaneously to both frogs and Brahmins, a most elaborate and playful pun.

1 After lying still for a year, Brahmins keeping their vow,¹ the frogs have raised their voice that Parjanya² has inspired.

2 When the heavenly waters came upon him³ dried out like a leather bag,⁴ lying in the pool, then the cries of the frogs joined in chorus like the lowing of cows with calves.

3 As soon as the season of rains has come, and it rains upon them who are longing, thirsting for it, one approaches another who calls to him, ‘Akhkhala’,⁵ as a son approaches his father.⁶

4 One of the two greets the other as they revel in the waters that, burst forth, and the frog leaps about under the falling rain, the speckled mingling his voice with the green.

5 When one of them repeats the speech of the other, as a pupil that of the teacher, every piece⁷ of them is in unison, as with fine voices you chant over the waters.

6 One lows like a cow, one bleats like a goat; one is speckled, one is green. They have the same name but they differ in form, and as they speak they ornament their voices in many ways.

7 Like Brahmins at the over-night sacrifice⁸ who speak around the full bowl of Soma, so you frogs around a pool celebrate the day of the year when the rains come.

8 Brahmins with soma raise their voice offering the prayer for the beginning of the year; the officiating priests⁹ come forth heated¹⁰ and sweating. None remain hidden.

9 They have kept the order of the twelve-month as ordained by the gods; these men do not neglect the season.¹¹ When the season of rains has come, after a year, the hot fires¹⁰ come to an end.

10 He who lows like a cow has given, he who bleats like a goat has given, the speckled one, the green one has given us riches. By giving hundreds of cows, the frogs have prolonged life in a thousand Soma-pressings.¹²

NOTES

1. A complex pun. Either a reference to the vow of silence which Brahmins (and frogs) have been keeping all year while estivating, or to their duty to chant (or croak) now.

2. Parjanya is the god of the rain-storm (cf. 5.83 and 7.101).

3. Most obviously a frog; but also with possible allusion to Vrtra lying under the waters that Indra released on a parallel and auspicious occasion (1.32.10).

4. Cf. Parjanya’s leather bag full of rains (5.83.7).

5. Sanskrit for ‘Brekkekkekkek koax koax koax’ (the sacred chant in The Frogs of Aristophanes).

6. He approaches him for instruction, for the father teaches his son the Vedic chants.

7. A pun. The word (parvan) means a piece of a text, or a chapter, the closing lines of which are chanted in harmony or unison; but with reference to the frogs, it means a limb, a piece of the body. Sayana says that in the hot dry season the frogs turn to earth, and in the rains they reappear with full-limbed bodies, every piece united.

8. An elaborate ceremony lasting through the night and involving Soma.

9. The Adhvaryus, who perform ritual in contrast with the Brahmins who offer prayer.

10. ‘Heat’ (in verse 8) refers specifically to the heated cauldron of milk offered in the Pravargya ceremony; when applied to the frogs, it retains its more general meaning of heat, particularly the heat of summer. The priests sweat over the cauldron, while the frogs appear to sweat as they are covered with drops of water. In verse 9 the ‘hot fires’ refer to the heat of summer, not the sacrificial fires.

11. They perform the proper ritual at the proper season; now they chant the hymns appropriate to the beginning of the year (the rains).

12. The frogs are described with the phrases traditionally devoted to generous patrons, who extend their own life-spans as a reward for giving riches to the sages composing the hymns; or as priests extending the life-spans of the patrons. This is accomplished by means of a thousand Soma-pressings, or else it extends the life- span long enough to perform a thousand Soma-pressings.

9.112   Human Diversity : A Hymn to Soma

A humorous, ironic, and worldly hymn, whose straightforward message seems to be that we are all after the same thing: wealth. This thought recurs in more lofty tones throughout the Rig Veda (as in the references to wealth in the hymns to Varuna, Usas, and Visnu). The hymn is loosely linked to Soma through the refrain; it may be a work-song, to be sung during the pressing of the Soma (‘to divert the mind’, says Sayana). It is quite diverting.

1 Our thoughts bring us to diverse callings, setting people apart: the carpenter seeks what is broken, the physician a fracture, and the Brahmin priest seeks one who presses

Soma.¹ O drop of Soma, flow for Indra.

2 With his dried twigs, with feathers of large birds, and with stones, the smith seeks all his days a man with gold.² O drop of Soma, flow for Indra.

3 I am a poet; my Dad’s a physician and Mum³ a miller with grinding-stones. With diverse thoughts we all strive for wealth, going after it like cattle. O drop of Soma, flow for Indra.

4 The harnessed horse longs for a light cart; seducers long for a woman’s smile; the penis for the two hairy lips, and the frog for water.⁴ O drop of Soma, flow for Indra.

NOTES

1. All three seek patrons or customers. The Brahmin priest is the one who rectifies any errors that may have been committed in the course of the sacrifice; he is therefore a sacerdotal ‘fixer’ (or sacrificial physician) like the other two. ‘Diverse callings’ may also imply conflicting interests : it is to the physician’s advantage when the patient sustains a fracture.

2. The plants, wings, and stones may be used for kindling, fanning the flames, and whetstones, or as sticks to make the shafts of arrows, feathers for their etches, and stones for their arrowheads.

3. Highly vernacular words for father and mother are used here.

4. Sayana points out one more unexpressed longing implicit in the verse : the poet longs for Soma and for gold, for a generous patron, like all the others in the hymn.

6.75   To Arms

1 This is a benediction that the royal chaplain would recite over the arms of the king before a military expedition or to bless the warriors protecting the consecrated stallion in the horse sacrifice. Each item in the arsenal is described separately and praised. His face is like a thundercloud, when the armoured warrior goes into the lap of battles. Conquer with an unwounded body; let the power of armour¹ keep you safe.

2 With the bow let us win cows, with the bow let us win the contest and violent battles with the bow. The bow ruins the enemy’s pleasure; with the bow let us conquer all the corners of the world.

3 She comes all the way up to your ear like a woman who wishes to say something, embracing her dear friend; humming like a woman, the bowstring stretched tight on the bow carries you safely across in the battle.

4 These two who go forward like a woman going to an encounter² hold the arrow in their lap as a mother holds a son. Let the two bow-tips, working together, pierce our enemies and scatter our foes.

5 He is the father of many daughters, and many are his sons.³ He makes a rattling sound as he goes down into battle. The quiver wins the attacks and all the skirmishes when he is strapped on a back and set to work.

6 Standing in the chariot, the skilful charioteer drives his prize-winning horses forward wherever he wishes to go. Praise the power of the reins: the guides follow the mind that is behind them.

7 Neighing violently, the horses with their showering hoofs outstrip everyone with their chariots. Trampling down the foes with the tips of their hoofs, they destroy their enemies without veering away.

8 The wagon of transport – oblation is its name⁴ – on which the weapons and armour are placed, on it let us place the working chariot and be of good heart all our days.

9 The fathers⁵ have assembled around the sweet one,⁶ giving power, a refuge in time of need, powerful and deep. With wondrous armies and the strength of arrows, unfading and all with equal manly powers, they loom immense as they storm the massed armies.

10 Fathers, Brahmins worthy of Soma, let the faultless sky and earth be kind to us. Let Püsan keep us from going the wrong way. O you who thrive on Order, guard us so that no one who plots evil will have power over us.

11 Her robe is an eagle, and her tooth is a deer; bound with cows, she flies as she is sent forward.⁷ Let the arrows give us shelter wherever men run together and run apart.

12 Spare us, O weapon flying true to its mark; let our body be stone. Let Soma speak a blessing upon us; let Aditi give us shelter.

13 He beats them on the back and strikes them on the haunches. O whip for horses, drive forward into battle the horses who sense what is ahead.

14 It wraps itself around the arm like a serpent with its coils, warding off the snap of the bowstring. Let the gauntlet,⁸ knowing all the ways, protect on all sides, a man protecting a man.

15 The divine arrow is smeared with poison, with a head of antelope horn and a mouth of iron. To this seed of Parjanya⁹ I bow low.

16 Once shot, fly far away, arrow, sharpened with prayer. Go straight to our foes, and do not leave a single one of them there.

17 Where the arrows fall as thick as boys with untrimmed locks of hair,¹⁰ there let Brahmanaspati and Aditi give us shelter, give us shelter for all our days.

18 I cover with armour those places on you where a wound is mortal. Let Soma the king dress you in ambrosia.¹¹ Let Varuna make wider yet your wide realm. Let the gods rejoice in you as you are victorious.

19 Whoever would harm us, whether it be one of our own people, or a stranger, or someone from far away, let all the gods ruin him. My inner armour is prayer.

NOTES

1. The armour is both the literal mail on the warrior and the armour implicit in the protection afforded by the present hymn, and by sacred power in general.

2. The word can mean both a battle and a meeting (either a rendezvous with a lover or a public meeting like a wedding or a festival).

3. The arrows are the sons and daughters of the quiver.

4. The transport wagon would carry not only the weapons and armour of the warrior, but his lighter war-chariot as well. Here it is further likened to the oblation that ‘carries’ the prayer to the gods (as Agni is said to be the ‘transporter’), either through pure metaphor or as a reference to the actual use of the transport wagon to carry the oblation before and after battle.

5. The fathers are both prototypes of warriors (especially in their role in assisting Indra to set the cows free from the cave) and sources of power for their warrior descendants.

6. The Soma.

7. The arrow is robed in eagle feathers, tipped with deer-horn, and bound with leather thongs.

8. The leather protecting the forearm.

9. The arrow is made of reed, which is said to contain the seed (rain) of Parjanya.

10. The simile is based either upon the image of arrows falling as close together as strands of hair on the head of a boy whose hair is thick, or arrows whose feathers are like the strands of hair on the boys, or arrows falling helter-skelter like young boys at play.

11. Or in immortality, the effect of drinking ambrosia.

10.34   The Gambler’s Lament

Tradition regards dice as the divinity to which this hymn is addressed, for the dice are praised in it, though they are also reviled: this is a monologue in which a gambler wrestles with his compulsive attraction to the dice. First, the dice are ‘born’ during a storm in which the brown nuts from which they are made cease to hang like pendant earrings from the nut tree and fall, to be made into dice. When the gambler loses his money, his wife is first alienated (v. 2) and then mistreated (‘They touch her, pulling at her garments, hair, et cetera’, says the commentator, perhaps thinking of the famous scene in the Mahabharata where Draupadi, the wife of the brothers who have lost her at dice, is abused); she is ashamed and angry, rejected by him (probably when she tries to stop him from gambling) and in turn rejecting him (probably when he tries to get money from her). He enters houses at night to steal or to borrow money, but when he finally abjures the dice, he is advised to be happy with what he has and perhaps even to hope to win back

his estranged wife and his lost cattle. Although this is basically a secular hymn (and in the monologue-dialogue form associated with non-liturgical hymns), one must bear in mind the religious significance of dice-playing in ancient India: the essential role played by the dice-game in the royal ceremony of consecration and the use of throws of the dice to represent the four Ages (or Yugas). Moreover, the hymn ends with a vow of repentance and a ‘ firm purpose of amendment’ that express a fervent religious faith.

1 The trembling hazelnut eardrops of the great tree, born in a hurricane, intoxicate me as they roll on the furrowed board. The dice seem to me like a drink of Soma from Mount Mujavant,¹ keeping me awake and excited.

2 She did not quarrel with me or get angry; she was kind to my friends and to me. Because of a losing throw of the dice I have driven away a devoted wife.

3 My wife’s mother hates me, and my wife pushes me away; the man in trouble finds no one with sympathy. They all say, ‘I find a gambler as useless as an old horse that someone wants to sell.’

4 Other men fondle the wife of a man whose possessions have been coveted by the plundering dice. His father, mother, and brothers all say of him, ‘We do not know him. Tie him up and take him away.’

5 When I swear, ‘I will not play with them’,² I am left behind by my friends as they depart. But when the brown dice raise their voice as they are thrown down, I run at once to the rendezvous with them, like a woman to her lover.

6 The gambler goes to the meeting-hall, asking himself ‘Will I win?’, and trembling with hope. But the dice cross him and counter his desire, giving the winning throws to his opponent.

7 The dice goad like hooks and prick like whips; they enslave, deceive, and torment. They give presents as children do,³ striking back at the winners. They are coated with honey – an irresistible power over the gambler.

8 Their army, three bands of fty, plays by rules as immutable as those of the god Savit?.⁴ They do not bow even to the wrath of those whose power is terrifying; the king himself bows down before them.

9 Down they roll, and up they spring. Handless, they master him that has hands. Unearthly coals thrown down on the gaming board, though they are cold they burn out the heart.

10 The deserted wife of the gambler grieves, and the mother grieves for her son who wanders anywhere, nowhere. In debt and in need of money, frightened, he goes at night to the houses of other men.

11 It torments the gambler to see his wife the woman of other men, in their comfortable rooms. But he yoked the brown horses⁵ in the early morning, and at evening he fell down by the fire, no longer a man 12 [To the dice:] To the general⁶ of your great army, the first king of your band, to him I hold out my ten fingers⁷ and swear this to be the truth: ‘I am holding back no money.’

13 This is what the noble Savitr shows me: ‘Play no longer with the dice, but till your field; enjoy what you possess, and value it highly. There are your cattle, and there is your wife, O gambler.’

14 [To the dice:] Grant us your friendship; have pity on us. Do not bewitch us with the force of your terrible sorcery. Lay to rest your anger, your hatred. Let someone else fall into the trap of the brown dice.

NOTES

1. The Soma plant that grows on Mount Mujavant is often said to prevent sleep.

2. The dice, or his friends.

3. That is, taking them back again.

4. Just as the rules of Savitr are fixed and binding over all creatures, even the other gods, so too the actions of the dice are incomprehensible and ineluctable. The commentator suggests that the dice play on the gaming board as Savitr plays in the universe.

5. Either actual horses, or a metaphor for the brown dice.

6. The general may be Kali, the losing throw, later personified as the spirit of gambling.

7. The ten fingers are extended both in the traditional gesture of submission and to show that the gambler is now literally empty-handed, that he has no more money for the dice to take.

10.146   Lost in the Forest

A traveller lost in the forest becomes frightened and succumbs to twilight mirages (vv. 3- 4). He begs the female spirit of the forest (mentioned nowhere else in the Rig Veda) not to harm him.

1 Spirit of the forest, spirit of the forest, who seem to melt away,¹ how is it that you do not ask about a village?² Doesn’t a kind of fear grasp you?

2 When the Chichika bird takes up the refrain from the droning cricket, the spirit of the forest is like a hunter startling the game with his noisy beaters.

3 The spirit of the forest at evening: You think you see cows grazing; you think you see a house; you think a cart is rumbling.³

4 Whoever stays in the forest at evening imagines : Someone is calling his cow; someone else is cutting wood; someone is crying out.

5 The spirit of the forest does not kill – not if no one else approaches.⁴ She eats sweet fruit and lies down wherever she pleases.⁵

6 Mother of wild beasts, untilled by a plough but full of food, sweet-smelling of perfume and balm – to her, the spirit of the forest, I offer my praise.

NOTES

1. The poet (the traveller lost in the forest) imagines that the spirit of the forest camouflages herself among the trees because she is afraid. He projects his fears upon her.

2. That is, why do you not ask where a village is, so that you can go there?

3. People would return in the evening with a cart laden with wood (v. 4); the small sounds of the forest imitate the creaking of such a cart.

4. A tiger or a robber might kill you, but this is not blamed upon the forest deity.

5. The spirit of the forest, being vegetarian, is harmless; she rests at night, in contrast with the demons and beasts who roam about.