Hymn to Indra
Rigveda VI.33 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) from Maṇḍala 6 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. Indra, mightiest one, grant that to us fully — bull, ever-helpful, bounteous giver. May the one with good horses win the prize of good horses, and overcome the obstacles and enemies in battle.
2. For help, Indra, the peoples of varied speech call on you in the winning of heroes. You, together with the inspired poets, struck down the Paṇis. Only when helped by you does the racing horse win the prize.
3. You, Indra, hero, have slain both kinds of enemies — the Dāsa foes and the Ārya foes as well — like a forest felled with well-aimed weapons. You tear them open in the battles, O most manly of men.
4. Be for us, Indra, with your unfailing help, a lifelong friend and protector, for our growth. When, in the struggle to win the sunlight, we call on you while fighting, sharing the battle at our side, O hero.
5. Now, Indra, and for the future too, be gracious to us, and stand by us in our need. Praising you thus, under the shelter of your greatness, may we be, on the decisive day, winners of cattle beneath the sky.
Translator's note: verse 4's "nemadhitā" (rendered here as "sharing the battle at our side") is an obscure compound of uncertain sense — it is conservatively read as describing shared or joint struggle rather than rendered with false precision. Verse 3's "atkaiḥ" (a term that can mean "garment" or, by extension, "weapon/covering") is rendered as "weapons" following the martial context of the verse.
Colophon
Rigveda VI.33 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 VI.33
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.
ya ojiṣṭha indra taṁ su no dā mado vṛṣan svabhiṣṭir dāsvān |
sauvaśvyaṁ yo vanavat svaśvo vṛtrā samatsu sāsahad amitrān || 1 ||
tvāṁ hī3ndrāvase vivāco havante carṣaṇayaḥ śūrasātau |
tvaṁ viprebhir vi paṇīm̐r aśāyas tvota it sanitā vājam arvā || 2 ||
tvaṁ tām̐ indrobhayām̐ amitrān dāsā vṛtrāṇy āryā ca śūra |
vadhīr vaneva sudhitebhir atkair ā pṛtsu darṣi nṛṇāṁ nṛtama || 3 ||
sa tvaṁ na indrākavābhir ūtī sakhā viśvāyur avitā vṛdhe bhūḥ |
svarṣātā yad dhvayāmasi tvā yudhyanto nemadhitā pṛtsu śūra || 4 ||
nūnaṁ na indrāparāya ca syā bhavā mṛḻīka uta no abhiṣṭau |
itthā gṛṇanto mahinasya śarman divi ṣyāma pārye goṣatamāḥ || 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).