Hymn to Mitra and Varuṇa
Rigveda I.137 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) addressed to Mitra and Varuṇa, the great pair: Mitra the lord of covenant and Varuṇa the upholder of cosmic law. 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. Two kings who touch the sky — come here, toward us. These soma drinks are yours, Mitra and Varuṇa: bright, mixed with milk, mixed with milk.
2. And at the waking of dawn, together with the rays of the sun, soma is pressed for Mitra and for Varuṇa to drink — pleasing, to be drunk in accordance with truth.
3. Come here, toward us, turn this way, to drink the soma. This soma, pressed by men, is for you, Mitra and Varuṇa — pressed for you to drink.
Translator's note: "gavāśiraḥ" (verse 1) literally means "having a milk mixture" — soma blended with milk; rendered here as "mixed with milk." "ṛtāya" (verse 2) refers to ṛta, the cosmic/ritual order that Vedic sacrifice upholds; rendered as "truth" for readability.
Colophon
Rigveda I.137 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.137
ā rājānā divispṛśāsmatrā gantam upa naḥ |
ime vām mitrāvaruṇā gavāśiraḥ somāḥ śukrā gavāśiraḥ || 1 ||
uta vām uṣaso budhi sākaṁ sūryasya raśmibhiḥ |
suto mitrāya varuṇāya pītaye cārur ṛtāya pītaye || 2 ||
asmatrā gantam upa no 'rvāñcā somapītaye |
ayaṁ vām mitrāvaruṇā nṛbhiḥ sutaḥ soma ā pītaye sutaḥ || 3 ||
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).