Hymn to Soma and Indra
Rigveda VI.39 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. Pour out for us, god — for the one who sings your praise — the cattle-rich gifts that go with him: the joyous heavenly sage of inspired thought and speech, the sweet one.
2. This Uśanas circled the pressing-stone for the cows, harnessed by insights of truth, himself yoked to truth. He broke apart Vala's unbroken summit — with his words Indra fought against the Paṇis.
3. This one, the Soma-drop, made the dark nights shine — through the nights, in the evening, at daybreak, through the seasons, O Indra. They have raised up this banner of the days; he brought forth the pure-born dawns.
4. Shining himself, this one made the unlit things shine; by truth and order he made the many dawns break forth. This one rides with truth-yoked horses, with sun-finding kinship, filling the tribes of the earth.
5. Now praised, ancient king, pour out for the one who praises you abundant gifts, for the giving of wealth. Release for us — for our hymn of praise — the poison-free plants, the forests, the cows, the horses, the men.
Translator's note: this hymn is unusually compressed even by Rigvedic standards, with elided verbs and pronouns ("this one") that shift reference between Soma and Indra across the verses. Verse 1 addresses a "divine sage" and "sweet one" who is Soma; verse 2 names Indra directly, recalling his breaking of the demon Vala's mountain to free the cows held by the Paṇis; verses 3–5 continue to blend Soma imagery (the shining "drop," the dawns) with vocatives to Indra and to an unnamed "ancient king." The renderings above follow the Sanskrit word order and case relations as closely as modern English allows; where the referent of "this one" is genuinely ambiguous between Soma and Indra, the ambiguity has been preserved rather than resolved.
Colophon
Rigveda VI.39 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.39
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.
mandrasya kaver divyasya vahner vipramanmano vacanasya madhvaḥ |
apā nas tasya sacanasya deveṣo yuvasva gṛṇate goagrāḥ || 1 ||
ayam uśānaḥ pary adrim usrā ṛtadhītibhir ṛtayug yujānaḥ |
rujad arugṇaṁ vi valasya sānum paṇīm̐r vacobhir abhi yodhad indraḥ || 2 ||
ayaṁ dyotayad adyuto vy a1ktūn doṣā vastoḥ śarada indur indra |
imaṁ ketum adadhur nū cid ahnāṁ śucijanmana uṣasaś cakāra || 3 ||
ayaṁ rocayad aruco rucāno3 'yaṁ vāsayad vy ṛ1tena pūrvīḥ |
ayam īyata ṛtayugbhir aśvaiḥ svarvidā nābhinā carṣaṇiprāḥ || 4 ||
nū gṛṇāno gṛṇate pratna rājann iṣaḥ pinva vasudeyāya pūrvīḥ |
apa oṣadhīr aviṣā vanāni gā arvato nṝn ṛcase rirīhi || 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).