Hymn to Agni

Rigveda I.99 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. For Jātavedas let us press the soma; may he burn down the wealth of the hostile one. May Agni carry us across all dangers, across misfortunes, as a boat carries us across a river.

Translator's note: "Jātavedas" ("knower of all born things") is an epithet of Agni used in place of his name in this verse's opening line; the translation keeps both names as the Sanskrit does. "Wealth" (vedaḥ) here means possessions or goods, not the scripture — the word is unrelated to "Veda" despite the resemblance in English transliteration.

Colophon

Rigveda I.99 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.

🌲

Source Text: ṛgveda I.99

jātavedase sunavāma somam arātīyato ni dahāti vedaḥ |
sa naḥ parṣad ati durgāṇi viśvā nāveva sindhuṁ duritāty agniḥ || 1 ||

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).