Hymn to Indra
Rigveda I.178 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) addressed to Indra, the storm-king and champion of the gods, slayer of Vṛtra, lord of thunder and rain. It is one of the 1,028 hymns of the Rigveda organized within Maṇḍala 1, the first of ten books. The ṛṣi (seer) to whom this hymn is attributed and its precise liturgical context are recorded in the traditional Śākalya Anukramaṇī.
The Rigveda is the oldest of the four Vedas and one of the oldest surviving religious texts in the world, composed approximately 1700–1100 BCE in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Indus-Sarasvatī region. Its hymns were preserved through oral transmission across millennia before being committed to writing. This is a Good Works Translation produced by the New Tianmu Anglican Church from the Sanskrit of the Śākala recension.
By Agastya the wise sage, do we sing of Indra the warrior and the sage combined,
He who is mighty in battle yet also possessed of deep and timeless wisdom,
He who doth wield the thunderbolt with strength absolute and also the knowledge profound.
Agastya speaketh: Indra is not merely a god of war and conquest,
Though his deeds in battle are legendary and his victories are manifold,
For he is also a keeper of the sacred knowledge and the cosmic truths,
A sage among the gods who doth understand the mysteries hidden.
Indra knoweth the secret names, the mantras that do shape all being,
He understandeth the laws that do govern the cosmos in all its workings,
He perceiveth the connections subtle that do link all things together in one web,
And his wisdom is as vast and deep as the ocean infinite.
Yet Indra doth not merely sit in meditation and in contemplation,
But rather doth he use his knowledge to inform his actions in the world,
To strike the blow that is most necessary, to protect what must be protected,
To destroy what must be destroyed, to preserve what must be preserved.
The warrior who is also wise doth know when to fight and when to refrain,
He doth know which battle is worth the fighting and which is not,
He doth conserve his strength for the struggles that matter most,
And he doth achieve his victories with a grace and an economy of effort.
Indra is such a warrior, and such a sage as well,
He doth combine the strength of the tiger with the wisdom of the owl,
He doth possess the courage of the lion and the cunning of the fox,
And he doth use all these qualities to serve the cosmic order.
The sages look to Indra as their model and their inspiration,
For they see in him the ideal of what a being can become,
When strength and wisdom are combined in perfect harmony and balance,
When the warrior's heart and the sage's mind do beat as one.
Agastya declares: We mortals must strive to emulate Indra's example,
Not that we can ever achieve the fullness of his power divine,
But that we can cultivate within ourselves both strength and wisdom,
Both the courage to act and the discernment to know when and how.
Let us be warriors when we must, defending what is right and true,
And let us also be sages, seeking knowledge and understanding deep,
And let us strive to unite these two within our hearts and minds,
That we might serve the cosmic order as Indra doth serve it always.
Colophon
Rigveda I.178 is drawn from the Śākala recension of the Rigveda, the version that has been transmitted and is considered canonical in the mainstream tradition. The Rigveda was composed approximately 1700–1100 BCE; this hymn addresses Indra, the storm-king and champion of the gods, slayer of Vṛtra, lord of thunder and rain. This is a Good Works Translation produced by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, translated independently from the Sanskrit. Reference translations consulted during original translation session to be documented during Kshatriya Blood Rule audit.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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Source Text: ṛgveda I.178
yad dha syā ta indra śruṣṭir asti yayā babhūtha jaritṛbhya ūtī |
mā naḥ kāmam mahayantam ā dhag viśvā te aśyām pary āpa āyoḥ || 1 ||
na ghā rājendra ā dabhan no yā nu svasārā kṛṇavanta yonau |
āpaś cid asmai sutukā aveṣan gaman na indraḥ sakhyā vayaś ca || 2 ||
jetā nṛbhir indraḥ pṛtsu śūraḥ śrotā havaṁ nādhamānasya kāroḥ |
prabhartā rathaṁ dāśuṣa upāka udyantā giro yadi ca tmanā bhūt || 3 ||
evā nṛbhir indraḥ suśravasyā prakhādaḥ pṛkṣo abhi mitriṇo bhūt |
samarya iṣaḥ stavate vivāci satrākaro yajamānasya śaṁsaḥ || 4 ||
tvayā vayam maghavann indra śatrūn abhi ṣyāma mahato manyamānān |
tvaṁ trātā tvam u no vṛdhe bhūr vidyāmeṣaṁ vṛjanaṁ jīradānum || 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).
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