The Falcon Who Carried the Soma
Rigveda IV.27 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) from Maṇḍala 4 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. While still in the womb I already knew all the births of these gods. A hundred iron fortresses held me guarded; then, as a falcon, I broke out with speed.
2. No, he did not carry me off against my will — he came to me with force, with valor. Puraṁdhi did not abandon me to the hostile ones; and growing strong, I outran even the winds.
3. When the falcon screamed down out of heaven, and the wind was carrying off Puraṁdhi, Kṛśānu the archer, eager and swift of mind, let fly — he loosed his bowstring at him.
4. Straight-flying, like Bhujyu whom Indra favored, the falcon carried it off from the high ridge; a feather of his fell away in mid-air, a feather of that bird sped on its course.
5. Then the bounteous one took the white vessel, anointed with milk, swelling with the bright juice — the choicest of the sweet drink held out by the Adhvaryu priests. Indra took it to drink for his exhilaration; the hero took it to drink for his exhilaration.
Translator's note: Verse 1 and 2 are spoken in the first person by the falcon (Śyena) who is identified with, or speaks for, Indra — the hymn is an act of self-praise (ātmastuti) rather than address to a deity in the third person. "Puraṁdhi" (verses 2–3) is a divine figure of abundance/bounty whose exact role in the myth is compressed and not fully recoverable from the verse alone; it is left transliterated rather than guessed at. Verse 4's "indrāvataḥ na bhujyum" — rendered here as "like Bhujyu whom Indra favored" — alludes tersely to the separate myth of Bhujyu's rescue and is one of the more compressed lines in the hymn; the comparison's exact force is uncertain. The doubled final line of verse 5 reproduces a repetition present in the source text.
Colophon
Rigveda IV.27 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.
🌲
Source Text: ṛgveda IV.27
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.
garbhe nu sann anv eṣām avedam ahaṁ devānāṁ janimāni viśvā |
śatam mā pura āyasīr arakṣann adha śyeno javasā nir adīyam || 1 ||
na ghā sa mām apa joṣaṁ jabhārābhīm āsa tvakṣasā vīryeṇa |
īrmā puraṁdhir ajahād arātīr uta vātām̐ atarac chūśuvānaḥ || 2 ||
ava yac chyeno asvanīd adha dyor vi yad yadi vāta ūhuḥ puraṁdhim |
sṛjad yad asmā ava ha kṣipaj jyāṁ kṛśānur astā manasā bhuraṇyan || 3 ||
ṛjipya īm indrāvato na bhujyuṁ śyeno jabhāra bṛhato adhi ṣṇoḥ |
antaḥ patat patatry asya parṇam adha yāmani prasitasya tad veḥ || 4 ||
adha śvetaṁ kalaśaṁ gobhir aktam āpipyānam maghavā śukram andhaḥ |
adhvaryubhiḥ prayatam madhvo agram indro madāya prati dhat pibadhyai śūro madāya prati dhat pibadhyai || 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).