Hymn to the Viśvedevas

Rigveda VIII.28 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) from Maṇḍala 8 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. The gods — three and thirty, and more — who have sat down upon the sacred grass: they have surely found it, gaining doubly.

2. Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, and the fires that accompany the offering together, accompanied by their consorts, hallowed with the vaṣaṭ-call.

3. They are our guardians — in the west, in the north, and so too to the south, and in the east — with their whole host.

4. As the gods wish, so indeed shall it be; what is theirs, no one shall diminish — not even an ungenerous mortal.

5. Of the seven, seven spears; seven splendors are theirs; seven glories they have taken upon themselves.

Translator's note: verse 1's "vidann aha dvitāsanan" and verse 5's sequence of sevens are terse and formulaic in the Sanskrit; the English above renders them conservatively rather than expanding on their likely ritual significance.

Colophon

Rigveda VIII.28 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 VIII.28

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.

ye triṁśati trayas paro devāso barhir āsadan |
vidann aha dvitāsanan || 1 ||

varuṇo mitro aryamā smadrātiṣāco agnayaḥ |
patnīvanto vaṣaṭkṛtāḥ || 2 ||

te no gopā apācyās ta udak ta itthā nyak |
purastāt sarvayā viśā || 3 ||

yathā vaśanti devās tathed asat tad eṣāṁ nakir ā minat |
arāvā cana martyaḥ || 4 ||

saptānāṁ sapta ṛṣṭayaḥ sapta dyumnāny eṣām |
sapto adhi śriyo dhire || 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).