Hymn to the Maruts
Rigveda VII.58 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 forth to the troop that rains together, who is mighty in the divine order. The two worlds tremble at their greatness; they reach heaven, away from the depths of destruction.
2. Your very birth, O Maruts, is fiery and bright; you are fearsome, furious in your might, untiring. You who excel in greatness and in strength — every creature under the sun trembles at your approach.
3. Grant great vigor to the bounteous patrons; may the Maruts truly delight in our fine praise. A road already traveled carries a person no further — may your help carry us onward with aid worth longing for.
4. Aided by you, Maruts, the inspired singer gains a hundredfold; aided by you, the racehorse becomes victorious, winning a thousandfold; aided by you, the sovereign king slays the obstacle before him. Let that be your gift, O shakers.
5. I seek to call forth those sons of bounteous Rudra — will the Maruts turn to us again? Whatever offense we have given them, in secret or in the open, we beg forgiveness for that wrong from these mighty ones.
6. Let this fine praise of the bounteous ones be voiced; may the Maruts accept this hymn. Keep hatred far away, O mighty ones — protect us always with your blessings.
Translator's note: verse 3's "gato nādhvā vi tirāti jantum" (literally "a road [already] gone does not carry a person further") is a compressed proverb-like image; it is rendered here conservatively as a statement about a traveled road no longer helping the traveler, paired with the prayer that the Maruts' aid carry the singer forward instead. Verse 1's "nirṛter avaṁśāt" (from the beam-less/pit of Nirṛti, the goddess of dissolution) is rendered as "the depths of destruction" to keep the image without overspecifying an obscure compound.
Colophon
Rigveda VII.58 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.58
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 sākamukṣe arcatā gaṇāya yo daivyasya dhāmnas tuviṣmān |
uta kṣodanti rodasī mahitvā nakṣante nākaṁ nirṛter avaṁśāt || 1 ||
janūś cid vo marutas tveṣyeṇa bhīmāsas tuvimanyavo 'yāsaḥ |
pra ye mahobhir ojasota santi viśvo vo yāman bhayate svardṛk || 2 ||
bṛhad vayo maghavadbhyo dadhāta jujoṣann in marutaḥ suṣṭutiṁ naḥ |
gato nādhvā vi tirāti jantum pra ṇaḥ spārhābhir ūtibhis tireta || 3 ||
yuṣmoto vipro marutaḥ śatasvī yuṣmoto arvā sahuriḥ sahasrī |
yuṣmotaḥ samrāḻ uta hanti vṛtram pra tad vo astu dhūtayo deṣṇam || 4 ||
tām̐ ā rudrasya mīḻhuṣo vivāse kuvin naṁsante marutaḥ punar naḥ |
yat sasvartā jihīḻire yad āvir ava tad ena īmahe turāṇām || 5 ||
pra sā vāci suṣṭutir maghonām idaṁ sūktam maruto juṣanta |
ārāc cid dveṣo vṛṣaṇo yuyota yūyam pāta svastibhiḥ sadā naḥ || 6 ||
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).