Hymn to Indra
Rigveda III.44 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) from Maṇḍala 3 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. Let this delightful soma be yours, pressed together with the tawny drops. Enjoying it, Indra, come here with your tawny steeds; mount your tawny chariot.
2. Loving the dawn, you made her shine; loving the sun, you made it shine. Knowing, watchful, tawny-horsed Indra, you grow toward every glory.
3. Indra sustained heaven, of tawny substance, and earth, of tawny form — abundant nourishment for the two tawny ones, between whom the tawny one moves.
4. When born, the tawny bull shines through the whole luminous world. The tawny-horsed one takes up his tawny weapon, the tawny thunderbolt in his two arms.
5. Indra uncovered his eager, bright thunderbolt, wrapped about with gleaming light; with the tawny pressing-stones he laid bare the pressed soma, and with the tawny ones he drove the cows forth.
Translator's note: the Sanskrit repeats forms of the word hari ("tawny, golden") in nearly every line — for Indra's horses, his chariot, his thunderbolt, heaven and earth, the soma, and Indra himself — a deliberate sound-play that this translation renders as "tawny" throughout rather than varying the English. In verse 5, "the cows" (gāḥ) most likely means the cattle released from the cave myth, or possibly the milk mixed into the soma; the line is kept literal rather than resolved toward either reading.
Colophon
Rigveda III.44 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 III.44
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.
ayaṁ te astu haryataḥ soma ā haribhiḥ sutaḥ |
juṣāṇa indra haribhir na ā gahy ā tiṣṭha haritaṁ ratham || 1 ||
haryann uṣasam arcayaḥ sūryaṁ haryann arocayaḥ |
vidvām̐ś cikitvān haryaśva vardhasa indra viśvā abhi śriyaḥ || 2 ||
dyām indro haridhāyasam pṛthivīṁ harivarpasam |
adhārayad dharitor bhūri bhojanaṁ yayor antar hariś carat || 3 ||
jajñāno harito vṛṣā viśvam ā bhāti rocanam |
haryaśvo haritaṁ dhatta āyudham ā vajram bāhvor harim || 4 ||
indro haryantam arjunaṁ vajraṁ śukrair abhīvṛtam |
apāvṛṇod dharibhir adribhiḥ sutam ud gā haribhir ājata || 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).