For the Departed
Rigveda X.154 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 hymn belongs to the Rigveda's funeral cycle. It addresses the soul of someone newly dead, naming classes of the blessed dead — the disciplined, the fallen in battle, the generous, the ancient keepers of cosmic order, the seers — and sending the departed to join each in turn. Yama, lord of the dead, is invoked directly in the final two verses.
1. Soma flows pure for some; others wait on him with ghee in hand. To those for whom the sweetness runs freely — go, join them too.
2. Those unassailable through their austerity, who by austerity reached the sun, who made their austerity into greatness — go, join them too.
3. Those who fight in the thick of battle, the heroes who give up their bodies, or those who give a thousand as their sacrificial gift — go, join them too.
4. Those of old who upheld the sacred order, who possessed that order, who made it grow — the fathers rich in austerity, O Yama — go, join them too.
5. The seers of a thousand paths who keep watch over the sun — the sages rich in austerity, born of austerity, O Yama — go, join them too.
Translator's note: the imperative "gacchatāt" ("go!") addresses the departed soul throughout; it has no separate word each time in the Sanskrit but is understood to repeat from verse 1. "Tapas" (rendered "austerity") carries the wider sense of ascetic heat/discipline that Vedic thought treats as a source of spiritual power; no single English word covers it fully.
Colophon
Rigveda X.154 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.154
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.
soma ekebhyaḥ pavate ghṛtam eka upāsate |
yebhyo madhu pradhāvati tām̐ś cid evāpi gacchatāt || 1 ||
tapasā ye anādhṛṣyās tapasā ye svar yayuḥ |
tapo ye cakrire mahas tām̐ś cid evāpi gacchatāt || 2 ||
ye yudhyante pradhaneṣu śūrāso ye tanūtyajaḥ |
ye vā sahasradakṣiṇās tām̐ś cid evāpi gacchatāt || 3 ||
ye cit pūrva ṛtasāpa ṛtāvāna ṛtāvṛdhaḥ |
pitṝn tapasvato yama tām̐ś cid evāpi gacchatāt || 4 ||
sahasraṇīthāḥ kavayo ye gopāyanti sūryam |
ṛṣīn tapasvato yama tapojām̐ api gacchatāt || 5 ||
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).