Hymn to Indra and Soma
Rigveda VI.72 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. O Indra and Soma, great is that greatness of yours: the two of you did great deeds, and did them first. You two found the sun; you two found heaven's light; you struck away all the darknesses, and the scorners too.
2. O Indra and Soma, you two make the dawn appear, you two lead up the sun together with its light. You propped up the sky with a prop, and spread wide the mother earth.
3. O Indra and Soma, you two slew the serpent who held the waters penned in; heaven itself approved of you for it. You set the rivers' floods flowing, and spread out the many seas.
4. O Indra and Soma, you two placed the cooked within the raw, there in the udders of the cows; you two seized what was unbound and bright within these bright, moving creatures.
5. O Indra and Soma, you two indeed granted a conquering power, joined with offspring, worthy to be told of. Mighty ones, you two wove together, for the peoples, a manly strength that overcomes in battle.
Translator's note: Verse 4 is famously compressed and image-laden — the "cooked within the raw" and the "unbound, bright thing" seized "within the moving creatures" refer to milk forming inside the cow, but the verse names none of this directly. The rendering here follows the Sanskrit word order and leaves the riddle as the text leaves it, rather than supplying the unstated referents.
Colophon
Rigveda VI.72 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 VI.72
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.
indrāsomā mahi tad vām mahitvaṁ yuvam mahāni prathamāni cakrathuḥ |
yuvaṁ sūryaṁ vividathur yuvaṁ sva1r viśvā tamāṁsy ahataṁ nidaś ca || 1 ||
indrāsomā vāsayatha uṣāsam ut sūryaṁ nayatho jyotiṣā saha |
upa dyāṁ skambhathuḥ skambhanenāprathatam pṛthivīm mātaraṁ vi || 2 ||
indrāsomāv ahim apaḥ pariṣṭhāṁ hatho vṛtram anu vāṁ dyaur amanyata |
prārṇāṁsy airayataṁ nadīnām ā samudrāṇi paprathuḥ purūṇi || 3 ||
indrāsomā pakvam āmāsv antar ni gavām id dadhathur vakṣaṇāsu |
jagṛbhathur anapinaddham āsu ruśac citrāsu jagatīṣv antaḥ || 4 ||
indrāsomā yuvam aṅga tarutram apatyasācaṁ śrutyaṁ rarāthe |
yuvaṁ śuṣmaṁ naryaṁ carṣaṇibhyaḥ saṁ vivyathuḥ pṛtanāṣāham ugrā || 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).