Hymn to the Viśvedevas — The Brahmin's Wife Restored
Rigveda X.109 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) from Maṇḍala 10 of the Rigveda, one of the 1,028 hymns organized within the ten books of the oldest Veda. The Rigveda was composed approximately 1700–1100 BCE in Vedic Sanskrit and preserved through oral transmission across millennia.
This is a Good Works Translation produced for the Good Works Library from the Sanskrit of the Śākala recension.
1. These spoke first about the crime against the sacred word: the boundless sea, the flowing Mātariśvan, the strong-holding fervor — fierce, yet a source of joy — and the divine Waters, first-born through truth.
2. King Soma was the first to give the brahmin's wife back, and did not rage. Varuṇa was his attendant, Mitra beside him; Agni the offering-priest took her by the hand and led her.
3. Only by the hand is she to be taken, her pledge, once they have said, "This is the brahmin's wife." She would not stand to be sent for by a messenger — so is the kingdom of the ruling lord kept guarded.
4. The gods of old spoke about her, and the seven seers who sat down to their fervor: "Fearsome is the brahmin's wife when she is led away — she sets a hard restraint in the highest heaven."
5. The brahmacārin goes about, laboring at his tasks; he becomes one limb of the gods. Through him Bṛhaspati found the wife again, the one Soma had led away — as the gods found the sacrificial ladle.
6. Again the gods gave her back, and again the men did too. The kings, making the word true, gave the brahmin's wife back again.
7. Having given the brahmin's wife back, having become free of that wrong together with the gods, and having shared in the strength of the earth, they draw near in worship to the far-ranging one.
Translator's note: "juhvaṁ na devāḥ" in verse 5 (literally "as the gods [found] the juhū," the sacrificial ladle) is rendered conservatively as a simile of recovery; the ladle also echoes the hymn's traditional attribution to the seer Juhū Brahmajāyā. "Urugāyam" in verse 7 ("the wide-ranging/far-striding one") is kept general rather than resolved to a specific deity, since the Sanskrit itself leaves it as an epithet.
Colophon
Rigveda X.109 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 X.109
Sanskrit source text from the Aufrecht edition (1877) via GRETIL (Van Nooten & Holland input). Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.
te 'vadan prathamā brahmakilbiṣe 'kūpāraḥ salilo mātariśvā |
vīḻuharās tapa ugro mayobhūr āpo devīḥ prathamajā ṛtena || 1 ||
somo rājā prathamo brahmajāyām punaḥ prāyacchad ahṛṇīyamānaḥ |
anvartitā varuṇo mitra āsīd agnir hotā hastagṛhyā nināya || 2 ||
hastenaiva grāhya ādhir asyā brahmajāyeyam iti ced avocan |
na dūtāya prahye tastha eṣā tathā rāṣṭraṁ gupitaṁ kṣatriyasya || 3 ||
devā etasyām avadanta pūrve saptaṛṣayas tapase ye niṣeduḥ |
bhīmā jāyā brāhmaṇasyopanītā durdhāṁ dadhāti parame vyoman || 4 ||
brahmacārī carati veviṣad viṣaḥ sa devānām bhavaty ekam aṅgam |
tena jāyām anv avindad bṛhaspatiḥ somena nītāṁ juhva1ṁ na devāḥ || 5 ||
punar vai devā adaduḥ punar manuṣyā uta |
rājānaḥ satyaṁ kṛṇvānā brahmajāyām punar daduḥ || 6 ||
punardāya brahmajāyāṁ kṛtvī devair nikilbiṣam |
ūrjam pṛthivyā bhaktvāyorugāyam upāsate || 7 ||
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).