Hymn to Indra
Rigveda VIII.34 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. Come, Indra, with your bay horses, to Kaṇva's fine hymn of praise — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
2. May the pressing-stone, speaking here and filled with soma, draw you near with its sound — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
3. Here their wheel-rim shakes them, as a wolf shakes a ewe — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
4. The Kaṇvas call you here for help, to win us strength — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
5. I set before you, the bull, the first draught of the pressed soma — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
6. Come to us like bounty itself, with insight turned to every side, for our help — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
7. Come to us, O great of mind, you of a thousand helps, a hundred bounties — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
8. May the praiseworthy priest, set in his place by Manu, bring you here among the gods — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
9. May your two bay horses, stirred by the soma's exhilaration, carry you here as wings carry a falcon — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
10. Come, O lord, come near — hail! — to drink the soma — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
11. Come to us on hearing our call, and take delight here in our hymns — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
12. Come readily to us with your matched horses gathered and harnessed — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
13. Come from the mountains, from above the surface of the sea — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
14. Burst open for us, O hero, a thousand herds of cattle and horses — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
15. Bring to us by the thousands, by the ten-thousands, and by the hundreds — ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu.
16. When Indra and I together give a thousand head of bright, shining wealth — the mightiest herd of horses.
17. Tawny horses, swift as the wind, ruddy, light of movement — they shine like suns.
18. Amid the gifts of Pārāvata, in the swift, fast-wheeled chariots, I stood in the middle of the forest.
Translator's note: the recurring line "divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso" is a compressed, formulaic refrain closing verses 1–15; it is rendered consistently here as an epithet-clause for Indra ("ruler of that heaven above, who has gone to heaven, O Divāvasu"), taking Divāvasu ("rich in heavenly wealth") as a vocative epithet of Indra. Verse 3's wheel-rim/wolf/ewe image and verse 18's closing scene (the gift-giver Pārāvata, the forest) are terse and their exact ritual reference is uncertain; both are rendered conservatively, word for word, rather than smoothed into a guessed narrative.
Colophon
Rigveda VIII.34 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.34
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.
endra yāhi haribhir upa kaṇvasya suṣṭutim |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 1 ||
ā tvā grāvā vadann iha somī ghoṣeṇa yacchatu |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 2 ||
atrā vi nemir eṣām urāṁ na dhūnute vṛkaḥ |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 3 ||
ā tvā kaṇvā ihāvase havante vājasātaye |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 4 ||
dadhāmi te sutānāṁ vṛṣṇe na pūrvapāyyam |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 5 ||
smatpuraṁdhir na ā gahi viśvatodhīr na ūtaye |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 6 ||
ā no yāhi mahemate sahasrote śatāmagha |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 7 ||
ā tvā hotā manurhito devatrā vakṣad īḍyaḥ |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 8 ||
ā tvā madacyutā harī śyenam pakṣeva vakṣataḥ |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 9 ||
ā yāhy arya ā pari svāhā somasya pītaye |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 10 ||
ā no yāhy upaśruty uktheṣu raṇayā iha |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 11 ||
sarūpair ā su no gahi sambhṛtaiḥ sambhṛtāśvaḥ |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 12 ||
ā yāhi parvatebhyaḥ samudrasyādhi viṣṭapaḥ |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 13 ||
ā no gavyāny aśvyā sahasrā śūra dardṛhi |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 14 ||
ā naḥ sahasraśo bharāyutāni śatāni ca |
divo amuṣya śāsato divaṁ yaya divāvaso || 15 ||
ā yad indraś ca dadvahe sahasraṁ vasurociṣaḥ |
ojiṣṭham aśvyam paśum || 16 ||
ya ṛjrā vātaraṁhaso 'ruṣāso raghuṣyadaḥ |
bhrājante sūryā iva || 17 ||
pārāvatasya rātiṣu dravaccakreṣv āśuṣu |
tiṣṭhaṁ vanasya madhya ā || 18 ||
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).