Hymn to Indra
Rigveda VII.31 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) from Maṇḍala 7 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. Sing out, friends, your exhilarating hymn to Indra, the tawny-horsed, the soma-drinker.
2. Let the hymn be proclaimed to the bountiful one, the heavenly hymn, as our forefathers did — we have made it for the truly bounteous one.
3. You, Indra, win strength for us; you win cattle, O hundred-powered one; you win gold, O treasure-lord.
4. We, Indra, longing for you, cry out loudly toward you, O bull. Know this well of us, O bountiful one.
5. Do not hand us over to blame, or to the taunt of a grudging, miserly rival. My resolve rests in you alone.
6. You are broad armor, and the champion who fights in the front rank, O slayer of Vṛtra. With you as my ally, I speak out boldly.
7. You are truly great, Indra — the two mighty world-halves, heaven and earth, have acknowledged your strength.
8. May the hymn, accompanied by the Maruts, moving alongside you, surround you, reaching you together with the days.
9. The soma-drops rise up toward you, the wondrous one, in the sky; the peoples bow down to you, all together.
10. Offer up to your great one, who grows ever greater, the wise one; bring forth your goodwill toward him. Go forth over the many tribes, O you who fill the peoples.
11. For the wide-reaching, mighty one, the inspired poets fashion a well-formed hymn, a sacred formula, for Indra. The wise do not transgress his ordinances.
12. The hymns together have made Indra — whose fury none can surpass — king, so that he may prevail. Strengthen, with your might, the kinsmen of the tawny-horsed one.
Translator's note: verses 2, 10, and 12 compress several grammatical subjects into few words and are read here conservatively — "the heavenly hymn" (2), the addressee of "your great one" (10), and "the kinsmen of the tawny-horsed one" (12) admit more than one construal in the Sanskrit; the rendering above keeps to the plainest reading of each word.
Colophon
Rigveda VII.31 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 VII.31
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.
pra va indrāya mādanaṁ haryaśvāya gāyata |
sakhāyaḥ somapāvne || 1 ||
śaṁsed ukthaṁ sudānava uta dyukṣaṁ yathā naraḥ |
cakṛmā satyarādhase || 2 ||
tvaṁ na indra vājayus tvaṁ gavyuḥ śatakrato |
tvaṁ hiraṇyayur vaso || 3 ||
vayam indra tvāyavo 'bhi pra ṇonumo vṛṣan |
viddhī tv a1sya no vaso || 4 ||
mā no nide ca vaktave 'ryo randhīr arāvṇe |
tve api kratur mama || 5 ||
tvaṁ varmāsi saprathaḥ puroyodhaś ca vṛtrahan |
tvayā prati bruve yujā || 6 ||
mahām̐ utāsi yasya te 'nu svadhāvarī sahaḥ |
mamnāte indra rodasī || 7 ||
taṁ tvā marutvatī pari bhuvad vāṇī sayāvarī |
nakṣamāṇā saha dyubhiḥ || 8 ||
ūrdhvāsas tvānv indavo bhuvan dasmam upa dyavi |
saṁ te namanta kṛṣṭayaḥ || 9 ||
pra vo mahe mahivṛdhe bharadhvam pracetase pra sumatiṁ kṛṇudhvam |
viśaḥ pūrvīḥ pra carā carṣaṇiprāḥ || 10 ||
uruvyacase mahine suvṛktim indrāya brahma janayanta viprāḥ |
tasya vratāni na minanti dhīrāḥ || 11 ||
indraṁ vāṇīr anuttamanyum eva satrā rājānaṁ dadhire sahadhyai |
haryaśvāya barhayā sam āpīn || 12 ||
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).