Dānastuti — In Praise of Vṛka's Gifts
Rigveda VIII.56 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. Toward the Dasyu, O Vṛka, your bounty was shown without shame — your might spread wide as the sky.
2. Ten thousand gifts to me gave Vṛka, son of Pūtakratu, foe of the Dasyu — bounteously, from his own store of wealth.
3. A hundred donkeys to me, a hundred wool-bearing ewes, a hundred slaves, and garlands beyond.
4. There too were led forth, adorned, for the line of Pūtakratu — like herds of horses.
5. Agni became known — wise, the carrier of offerings, he of the fine chariot. Agni shone greatly with bright flame; the sun shone, in heaven the sun shone.
Translator's note: this hymn is a dānastuti — a praise of gifts given by a patron to the poet — rather than a hymn addressed to a single deity throughout; only the closing verse turns to Agni and the sun. Several terms resist certainty: "dasyave vṛka" in verse 1 may name the patron directly or set him against "the Dasyu" as a term for a hostile people; "ahrayam" ("without shame/openly") is rendered conservatively; "ati srajaḥ" in verse 3 (literally "beyond garlands") may mean the gifts exceeded the count of garlands given, or that the women themselves were garlanded — the Sanskrit is compressed and either reading is defensible; "pūtakratāyai" in verse 4 is read as a dative referring to Pūtakratu's household or line, though it could instead be a proper name in its own right.
Colophon
Rigveda VIII.56 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.56
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.
prati te dasyave vṛka rādho adarśy ahrayam |
dyaur na prathinā śavaḥ || 1 ||
daśa mahyam pautakrataḥ sahasrā dasyave vṛkaḥ |
nityād rāyo amaṁhata || 2 ||
śatam me gardabhānāṁ śatam ūrṇāvatīnām |
śataṁ dāsām̐ ati srajaḥ || 3 ||
tatro api prāṇīyata pūtakratāyai vyaktā |
aśvānām in na yūthyām || 4 ||
acety agniś cikitur havyavāṭ sa sumadrathaḥ |
agniḥ śukreṇa śociṣā bṛhat sūro arocata divi sūryo arocata || 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).