Hymn to Indra
Rigveda III.46 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. Yours, the fighter, the bull, self-ruling, fierce, young yet ancient, bold, unaging, mace-bearer — your mighty deeds, O Indra, the great deeds of the famed, great one.
2. You are great, O mighty one, in your bull-like powers, winner of wealth, fierce, overpowering others. Sole king of the whole world, you set the peoples to battle and to settling.
3. Shining, he exceeds all measure; unmatched on every side, he exceeds the gods. In greatness Indra exceeds heaven, exceeds earth, exceeds the wide, great atmosphere — he, drinker of the pressed-out soma.
4. Into Indra — wide, deep from birth, fierce, all-encompassing, the well-spring of hymns — the soma-juices pressed of old flow in, as flowing streams enter the ocean.
5. That soma, O Indra, which earth and heaven, devoted to you, bear as a mother bears her child — that the Adhvaryu priests speed for you, and that they cleanse for you, O bull, to drink.
Translator's note: verse 1 is a long string of genitive epithets with no finite verb in the Sanskrit; "your mighty deeds" supplies the implied sense rather than a stated verb. In verse 5, "tvāyā" ("for/toward you," here rendered "devoted to you") is a difficult form; the rendering is conservative.
Colophon
Rigveda III.46 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.46
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.
yudhmasya te vṛṣabhasya svarāja ugrasya yūnaḥ sthavirasya ghṛṣveḥ |
ajūryato vajriṇo vīryā3ṇīndra śrutasya mahato mahāni || 1 ||
mahām̐ asi mahiṣa vṛṣṇyebhir dhanaspṛd ugra sahamāno anyān |
eko viśvasya bhuvanasya rājā sa yodhayā ca kṣayayā ca janān || 2 ||
pra mātrābhī ririce rocamānaḥ pra devebhir viśvato apratītaḥ |
pra majmanā diva indraḥ pṛthivyāḥ proror maho antarikṣād ṛjīṣī || 3 ||
uruṁ gabhīraṁ januṣābhy u1graṁ viśvavyacasam avatam matīnām |
indraṁ somāsaḥ pradivi sutāsaḥ samudraṁ na sravata ā viśanti || 4 ||
yaṁ somam indra pṛthivīdyāvā garbhaṁ na mātā bibhṛtas tvāyā |
taṁ te hinvanti tam u te mṛjanty adhvaryavo vṛṣabha pātavā u || 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).