Hymn to the Maruts
Rigveda I.172 is a brief sūkta (hymn of praise) addressed to the Maruts, the storm-troop of heaven, sons of Rudra, who ride the winds and shake the earth. 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. Wondrous, O bounteous ones, let your journey be, wondrous your help — O Maruts, flashing like serpents of light.
2. Far away be that darting arrow of yours, O bounteous Maruts; far away the stone that you hurl.
3. Turn our people away, at once, from the tṛṇaskanda, O bounteous ones; raise us up, that we may live.
Translator's note: "ahibhānavaḥ" (v.1) is a compound of "ahi" (serpent/dragon) and "bhānu" (light, splendor); it is rendered here conservatively as "flashing like serpents of light," most likely picturing the Maruts' lightning. "tṛṇaskanda" (v.3, literally something like "grass-leaper") is obscure outside this passage and is left untranslated; it is generally understood as a locust or grasshopper-type pest threatening crops or people, which the hymn asks the Maruts to turn aside.
Colophon
Rigveda I.172 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.172
citro vo 'stu yāmaś citra ūtī sudānavaḥ |
maruto ahibhānavaḥ || 1 ||
āre sā vaḥ sudānavo maruta ṛñjatī śaruḥ |
āre aśmā yam asyatha || 2 ||
tṛṇaskandasya nu viśaḥ pari vṛṅkta sudānavaḥ |
ūrdhvān naḥ karta jīvase || 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).