Hymn to Agni
Rigveda V.17 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) from Maṇḍala 5 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. With sacrifices, O god, the mortal truly calls upon the mighty one for help. Pūru has praised Agni for protection, when the good rite is performed.
2. By his own mouth, more glorious in himself, you regard him in his ordaining power — him, the heavenly one of wondrous flame, the gladdening one, the supreme, through insight.
3. With his own radiance and his flame he has yoked himself, with vigor, with the hymn of praise — whose flames, like heaven's, blaze loftily with their outpouring.
4. By the power of him, the discerning, the wondrous one, wealth comes to the chariot. So among all the clans, Agni, worthy of invocation, is praised aloud.
5. Now indeed the patrons partake of the desirable gift with their mouth. O son of strength, protect us for our aid; grant us well-being; and be present in battles, for our increase.
Translator's note: this hymn's Sanskrit is elliptical in the manner typical of early Rigvedic verse, with several clauses lacking an explicit verb or clear referent for pronouns (notably in verses 2 and 3, "asya," "yaḥ," and "yasya" all refer back to Agni across shifting grammatical persons). The rendering above follows the most grammatically direct reading of each line rather than smoothing the syntax into continuous prose. The hymn addresses Agni alone throughout — the deity epithet "ūrjo napāt," "son of strength," in verse 5 is a standard Agni epithet, and no verse names or invokes Indra.
Colophon
Rigveda V.17 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 V.17
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 yajñair deva martya itthā tavyāṁsam ūtaye |
agniṁ kṛte svadhvare pūrur īḻītāvase || 1 ||
asya hi svayaśastara āsā vidharman manyase |
taṁ nākaṁ citraśociṣam mandram paro manīṣayā || 2 ||
asya vāsā u arciṣā ya āyukta tujā girā |
divo na yasya retasā bṛhac chocanty arcayaḥ || 3 ||
asya kratvā vicetaso dasmasya vasu ratha ā |
adhā viśvāsu havyo 'gnir vikṣu pra śasyate || 4 ||
nū na id dhi vāryam āsā sacanta sūrayaḥ |
ūrjo napād abhiṣṭaye pāhi śagdhi svastaya utaidhi pṛtsu no vṛdhe || 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).