Hymn to Agni
Rigveda I.66 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) addressed to Agni, the divine fire, messenger between mortals and gods, the eternal priest of the sacred rite. 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. Bright like wealth, visible like the sun; like the breath of life, vital force; lasting like a son.
2. Eager like a swift bird, he clings to the woods; pure and radiant like milk from a milk-cow.
3. He holds fast to peace, delightful like a home; like ripe barley, a conqueror of peoples.
4. Like a sage chanting praise, renowned among the clans; pleased like a racehorse, he grants vigor.
5. His blaze is hard to approach, constant like resolve; like a wife in her house, ready for all.
6. When he shines out brilliantly from the cloud, bright among the clans; gleaming like a chariot, fierce in battles.
7. Like an army let loose, he deals out force; like the flashing dart of an archer, his face ablaze.
8. Born as a twin, a twin by birth, lover of maidens, husband of wives.
9. Him we approach for your sake, as cows draw home to the kindled fire.
10. Like a river's flood, he drove the downward waters forth; the cows lowed at the sight of heaven's light.
Translator's note: This hymn is built almost entirely from bare similes ("like X") strung together without a main verb naming the compared thing — Agni is understood as the implicit subject throughout, per the standard reading of this hymn. Several phrases resist confident resolution: verse 9's "taṁ vaś carāthā vayaṁ vasati" has an unusual mix of persons and is rendered conservatively; verse 8's "twin" epithets (yama) for Agni are traditional but their exact sense here is debated; verse 10's closing image (cows/rays "lowing" at sunlight) is kept literal rather than resolved into a single metaphor.
Colophon
Rigveda I.66 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.66
rayir na citrā sūro na saṁdṛg āyur na prāṇo nityo na sūnuḥ || 1 ||
takvā na bhūrṇir vanā siṣakti payo na dhenuḥ śucir vibhāvā || 2 ||
dādhāra kṣemam oko na raṇvo yavo na pakvo jetā janānām || 3 ||
ṛṣir na stubhvā vikṣu praśasto vājī na prīto vayo dadhāti || 4 ||
durokaśociḥ kratur na nityo jāyeva yonāv araṁ viśvasmai || 5 ||
citro yad abhrāṭ chveto na vikṣu ratho na rukmī tveṣaḥ samatsu || 6 ||
seneva sṛṣṭāmaṁ dadhāty astur na didyut tveṣapratīkā || 7 ||
yamo ha jāto yamo janitvaṁ jāraḥ kanīnām patir janīnām || 8 ||
taṁ vaś carāthā vayaṁ vasatyāstaṁ na gāvo nakṣanta iddham || 9 ||
sindhur na kṣodaḥ pra nīcīr ainon navanta gāvaḥ sva1r dṛśīke || 10 ||
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).