Hymn to Vāyu
Rigveda I.134 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) addressed to Vāyu, the wind-god, first drinker of the pressed soma and the swift charioteer drawn by his team of horses (niyut). It is one of the 1,028 hymns of the Rigveda organized within Maṇḍala 1, the first of ten books. The ṛṣi (seer) to whom this hymn is attributed and its precise liturgical context are recorded in the traditional Śākalya Anukramaṇī.
The Rigveda is the oldest of the four Vedas and one of the oldest surviving religious texts in the world, composed approximately 1700–1100 BCE in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Indus-Sarasvatī region. Its hymns were preserved through oral transmission across millennia before being committed to writing. This is a Good Works Translation produced for the Good Works Library from the Sanskrit of the Śākala recension.
1. Let your mind stand upright, aware, following our glad offering-song. Come, O Vāyu, with your team-drawn chariot, to give — to give from the sacrificial feast.
2. When our helping powers, striving to win his favor, join his strength together, his team of horses comes as one to give; our hymns of praise call out to him.
3. Awaken Bounty, as a lover wakens the woman asleep. Light up the two worlds; make the dawn shine forth — make the dawn shine forth for glory.
4. For you the honey-yielding cow milks out every treasure. You gave birth to the Maruts from the streams — from the streams of heaven.
5. The stalking hunter, spent in the swift chase, prays to you for fortune. You protect against every creature by your law — by your mighty law you protect.
6. And from the clans rich in invocation, who have set themselves apart for you, all your milch-cows yield their mingled milk — they yield ghee, the mingled draught.
Translator's note: verse 3's "Bounty" renders puraṁdhi, a name for a goddess/personification of abundance that can also stand as an abstract noun; verse 5 is syntactically compressed and its "hunter" (tsārī) and "law/lordly power" (dharmaṇā āsuryāt) are rendered conservatively, following the plain sense of the Sanskrit words rather than any interpretive gloss.
Colophon
Rigveda I.134 is drawn from the Śākala recension of the Rigveda, composed approximately 1700–1100 BCE. This is a Good Works Translation rendered verse by verse from the Sanskrit text printed below. Prepared for the Good Work Library by the Tianmu Anglican Church with AI-assisted translation.
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Source Text: ṛgveda I.134
ūrdhvā te anu sūnṛtā manas tiṣṭhatu jānatī |
niyutvatā rathenā yāhi dāvane vāyo makhasya dāvane || 1 ||
yad dha krāṇā iradhyai dakṣaṁ sacanta ūtayaḥ |
sadhrīcīnā niyuto dāvane dhiya upa bruvata īṁ dhiyaḥ || 2 ||
pra bodhayā puraṁdhiṁ jāra ā sasatīm iva |
pra cakṣaya rodasī vāsayoṣasaḥ śravase vāsayoṣasaḥ || 3 ||
tubhyaṁ dhenuḥ sabardughā viśvā vasūni dohate |
ajanayo maruto vakṣaṇābhyo diva ā vakṣaṇābhyaḥ || 4 ||
tvāṁ tsārī dasamāno bhagam īṭṭe takvavīye |
tvaṁ viśvasmād bhuvanāt pāsi dharmaṇāsuryāt pāsi dharmaṇā || 5 ||
uto vihutmatīnāṁ viśāṁ vavarjuṣīṇām |
viśvā it te dhenavo duhra āśiraṁ ghṛtaṁ duhrata āśiram || 6 ||
Source Colophon
Sanskrit text of the Rigveda, Śākala recension. The standard scholarly edition is the Bombay Oriental (Vishva Bandhu, 5 vols., 1963–66). IAST transliteration available from GRETIL (Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages) and Vedaweb (University of Cologne). Both sources are open access. IAST transliteration from the Aufrecht edition (1877) via GRETIL (Van Nooten & Holland input, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).