Hymn to Mitra and Varuṇa
Rigveda I.153 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. We worship you together, great ones, with oblations, Mitra and Varuṇa, with acts of homage — with offerings of ghee, O you who drip with ghee — when for us the adhvaryu priests bring them, as it were, with their devotions.
2. A hymn of praise is offered to you, like an impulse toward your dwelling — a well-wrought praise, Mitra and Varuṇa — when the hotar anoints it at the rites, and the patron, desiring your favor, seeks you, O two bulls.
3. The milch-cow Aditi has swelled with milk for truth, for the man who gives the oblation, Mitra and Varuṇa, when, honoring you at the rite, that human hotar, having offered his gift, sets you in motion toward him.
4. And among the clans, in the intoxicating plant, the cows and the divine waters have swelled with milk for you. And may the ancient lord of this offering, granting it to us, drink his fill of the milk of the ruddy cow.
Translator's note: the hymn's syntax is compressed and several terms admit more than one reading. "Vidatheṣu" (verse 2) and "vidathe" (verse 3) are rendered "at the rites"/"at the rite," following the word's general sense of a ritual gathering. "Andhaḥ" (verse 4), literally "the plant" or "stalk," is rendered "the intoxicating plant" as a conservative gloss for the soma plant, which is not named outright in the verse. "Usriyāyāḥ" (verse 4), literally "of the ruddy/dawn one," is rendered "of the ruddy cow," its most common referent in this idiom.
Colophon
Rigveda I.153 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.153
yajāmahe vām mahaḥ sajoṣā havyebhir mitrāvaruṇā namobhiḥ |
ghṛtair ghṛtasnū adha yad vām asme adhvaryavo na dhītibhir bharanti || 1 ||
prastutir vāṁ dhāma na prayuktir ayāmi mitrāvaruṇā suvṛktiḥ |
anakti yad vāṁ vidatheṣu hotā sumnaṁ vāṁ sūrir vṛṣaṇāv iyakṣan || 2 ||
pīpāya dhenur aditir ṛtāya janāya mitrāvaruṇā havirde |
hinoti yad vāṁ vidathe saparyan sa rātahavyo mānuṣo na hotā || 3 ||
uta vāṁ vikṣu madyāsv andho gāva āpaś ca pīpayanta devīḥ |
uto no asya pūrvyaḥ patir dan vītam pātam payasa usriyāyāḥ || 4 ||
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).