Hymn to Yajña (the Sacrifice)
Rigveda X.130 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. The sacrifice that is stretched out on every side by its threads, extended through a hundred and one divine acts — these are the fathers who have come and who weave it. Seated at the stretched loom, they cry, "Weave forward! Weave back!"
2. A man stretches it out, a man draws it up; a man has spread it wide over this vault of heaven. Here are their pegs, where they sat down at their seat; they made the sāman verses into shuttles for the weaving.
3. What was the measure? What the model? What the base? What served as the ghee, and what as the enclosure? What was the meter, what the praüga-hymn, what the recited praise, when the gods, all of them, made sacrifice to the god?
4. The gāyatrī became yoked to Agni; Savitar was joined with the uṣṇih; Soma, made great through the hymns, was bound with the anuṣṭubh; the bṛhatī gave voice to the speech of Bṛhaspati.
5. The virāj is the crowning glory of Mitra and Varuṇa; here the triṣṭubh is Indra's share of the day. The jagatī entered into all the gods — by this the seers, the sons of Manu, were shaped and set in order.
6. By this the seers, the sons of Manu, were shaped and set in order, when the sacrifice was born, our fathers of old. Watching with the eye of the mind, I think I see those men of old who offered this very sacrifice.
7. Together with the chants, together with the meters, encompassed all around, together with the measures — the seven divine seers, following the path of those before them, the wise ones, took hold of the reins, like charioteers.
Translator's note: verse 3's "praüga" is a technical term for a class of introductory liturgical verses used in the Soma sacrifice; it is left untranslated as a proper term rather than rendered by an approximate English phrase. The sacrifice's weaving imagery (threads, loom, pegs, shuttles) is kept literal throughout rather than smoothed into paraphrase.
Colophon
Rigveda X.130 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.130
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.
yo yajño viśvatas tantubhis tata ekaśataṁ devakarmebhir āyataḥ |
ime vayanti pitaro ya āyayuḥ pra vayāpa vayety āsate tate || 1 ||
pumām̐ enaṁ tanuta ut kṛṇatti pumān vi tatne adhi nāke asmin |
ime mayūkhā upa sedur ū sadaḥ sāmāni cakrus tasarāṇy otave || 2 ||
kāsīt pramā pratimā kiṁ nidānam ājyaṁ kim āsīt paridhiḥ ka āsīt |
chandaḥ kim āsīt praügaṁ kim ukthaṁ yad devā devam ayajanta viśve || 3 ||
agner gāyatry abhavat sayugvoṣṇihayā savitā sam babhūva |
anuṣṭubhā soma ukthair mahasvān bṛhaspater bṛhatī vācam āvat || 4 ||
virāṇ mitrāvaruṇayor abhiśrīr indrasya triṣṭub iha bhāgo ahnaḥ |
viśvān devāñ jagaty ā viveśa tena cākḷpra ṛṣayo manuṣyāḥ || 5 ||
cākḷpre tena ṛṣayo manuṣyā yajñe jāte pitaro naḥ purāṇe |
paśyan manye manasā cakṣasā tān ya imaṁ yajñam ayajanta pūrve || 6 ||
sahastomāḥ sahachandasa āvṛtaḥ sahapramā ṛṣayaḥ sapta daivyāḥ |
pūrveṣām panthām anudṛśya dhīrā anvālebhire rathyo3 na raśmīn || 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).