Hymn to the Cows
Rigveda X.172 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. The hymn is very short — four verses — and calls the milk cows back along their homeward track, closing with the image of Dawn herself unrolling that same path out of the darkness of her sister Night.
1. Come here, eager; the cows keep to the track, since they travel heavy with milk in their udders.
2. Come here with a bounty-minded thought, most generous one, rousing the vigorous, together with the liberal givers.
3. Like those who carry food, we lay out just the thread, O bounteous ones; we make our offering.
4. Dawn rolls back the darkness of her sister Night, gathering up the track, by her own fine birth.
Translator's note: verse 2 turns on two uncertain words — "maṁhiṣṭhaḥ" ("most generous," here taken as an epithet of the one addressed) and "jārayan" (rendered "rousing," from the sense "to wake," though the same root can also mean "to wear away"). Verse 3's "tantum," the "thread," likely evokes the thread of a rite or a weaving, but the image is left as the Sanskrit gives it rather than expanded.
Colophon
Rigveda X.172 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.172
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.
ā yāhi vanasā saha gāvaḥ sacanta vartaniṁ yad ūdhabhiḥ || 1 ||
ā yāhi vasvyā dhiyā maṁhiṣṭho jārayanmakhaḥ sudānubhiḥ || 2 ||
pitubhṛto na tantum it sudānavaḥ prati dadhmo yajāmasi || 3 ||
uṣā apa svasus tamaḥ saṁ vartayati vartaniṁ sujātatā || 4 ||
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).