Hymn to the Aśvins
Rigveda I.158 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) addressed to the Aśvins, the twin divine horsemen. Its seer is Dīrghatamas, son of Mamatā, of the Aucathya line — he names himself in the final verse. The hymn recalls the ship sent to rescue Bhujyu, son of Tugra, from mid-ocean, and then turns to the seer's own ordeal: bound by hostile Dāsas and cast into a river, he was not swallowed by the waters, and an attacker named Traitana struck at him but harmed only himself. It is one of the 1,028 hymns of the Rigveda organized within Maṇḍala 1, the first of ten books.
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. You two Vasus, Rudras, of far-reaching thought, ever growing in strength — grant us your favor, you mighty bulls, in our need for aid. O wonder-workers, when Aucathya's inheritance was at stake, you two sped forth to him with unfailing help.
2. Who will bring you worship to win this same good will, you Vasus, when with homage you two bestow it at the place of the cow? Rouse abundant riches for us, you two who move with a mind as eager as desire.
3. When your solid ship was yoked for Tugra's son, and set out into the midst of the flood — may I too come to your sheltering protection, as a hero speeds to the racecourse on swift, flying courses.
4. Let this praise-song shelter Aucathya; let not these two rushing [waters] wash me away. Let not the piled, tenfold-kindled fire burn me, when, bound, I myself must chew the earth.
5. The rivers, most motherly, did not swallow me, when the Dāsas bound me fast and cast me in. When Traitana struck at his head, the Dāsa himself gnawed his own breast and shoulders.
6. Dīrghatamas, son of Mamatā, grown old in his tenth age — for those journeying toward the waters' goal, the sacred prayer becomes the charioteer.
Translator's note: verses 1–5 are compressed and allusive, referring to episodes of the Dīrghatamas legend (his binding by rivals, his casting into water, and the attack by Traitana) that the hymn itself never narrates in full — later tradition supplies the story the verses only gesture at. "Patatriṇī" in verse 4 (literally "the two flying/winged ones") is obscure; it is rendered conservatively here as "these two rushing [waters]." "Pade goḥ" in verse 2, literally "at the track/place of the cow," is kept close to the Sanskrit rather than expanded into an interpretive gloss.
Colophon
Rigveda I.158 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.158
vasū rudrā purumantū vṛdhantā daśasyataṁ no vṛṣaṇāv abhiṣṭau |
dasrā ha yad rekṇa aucathyo vām pra yat sasrāthe akavābhir ūtī || 1 ||
ko vāṁ dāśat sumataye cid asyai vasū yad dhethe namasā pade goḥ |
jigṛtam asme revatīḥ puraṁdhīḥ kāmapreṇeva manasā carantā || 2 ||
yukto ha yad vāṁ taugryāya perur vi madhye arṇaso dhāyi pajraḥ |
upa vām avaḥ śaraṇaṁ gameyaṁ śūro nājma patayadbhir evaiḥ || 3 ||
upastutir aucathyam uruṣyen mā mām ime patatriṇī vi dugdhām |
mā mām edho daśatayaś cito dhāk pra yad vām baddhas tmani khādati kṣām || 4 ||
na mā garan nadyo mātṛtamā dāsā yad īṁ susamubdham avādhuḥ |
śiro yad asya traitano vitakṣat svayaṁ dāsa uro aṁsāv api gdha || 5 ||
dīrghatamā māmateyo jujurvān daśame yuge |
apām arthaṁ yatīnām brahmā bhavati sārathiḥ || 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).