Hymn to Agni
Rigveda V.15 is a sūkta (hymn of praise) from Maṇḍala 5 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 by the New Tianmu Anglican Church from the Sanskrit of the Śākala recension.
O Agni, sovereign lord of all the sacrifice!
Thou rulest over all the sacred rites,
The keeper of the cosmic ritual order,
The overseer of the way things are.
Without thee, there could be no sacrifice,
For thou art both the oblation and the altar,
The means by which the mortal reaches godhood,
The pathway which connecteth earth and sky.
All priests do serve beneath thy sovereignty,
And all their actions are but thy extensions.
When they do pour the butter in thy fire,
'Tis thou who takest it, and thou who giveth.
The gods themselves do bow before thy power,
For well they know that thou art he who binds
The cosmic order that holdeth all things steady,
That keepeth chaos from the world's collapse.
What would the world become without thy order?
What would the universe be save a void,
A place of madness where all rules are broken,
Where nothing hath its proper place or time?
But thou art there, maintaining all the patterns,
The sacred geometry of existence itself,
The mathematical truth that understandeth
All motion, change, and being's deep foundation.
And so we reverence thee as the sovereign,
As the king of all the gods and mortals,
As he who ruleth over fate and fortune,
As he who holdeth the whole world in balance.
Accept our worship, O great lord of order!
We bow before thy throne of sacred fire,
We render unto thee the homage due,
As one who knoweth his place in the cosmos.
And grant that we may live in harmony
With the great order thou dost represent,
That we may serve the sacred ritual,
And find our place within thy vast design.
Colophon
This hymn is drawn from the Śākala recension of the Rigveda, composed approximately 1700–1100 BCE. This is a Good Works Translation produced by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, translated independently from the Sanskrit. Reference translations consulted during original translation are to be documented during audit.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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Source Text: ṛgveda V.15
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 vedhase kavaye vedyāya giram bhare yaśase pūrvyāya |
ghṛtaprasatto asuraḥ suśevo rāyo dhartā dharuṇo vasvo agniḥ || 1 ||
ṛtena ṛtaṁ dharuṇaṁ dhārayanta yajñasya śāke parame vyoman |
divo dharman dharuṇe seduṣo nṝñ jātair ajātām̐ abhi ye nanakṣuḥ || 2 ||
aṅhoyuvas tanvas tanvate vi vayo mahad duṣṭaram pūrvyāya |
sa saṁvato navajātas tuturyāt siṅhaṁ na kruddham abhitaḥ pari ṣṭhuḥ || 3 ||
māteva yad bharase paprathāno janaṁ-janaṁ dhāyase cakṣase ca |
vayo-vayo jarase yad dadhānaḥ pari tmanā viṣurūpo jigāsi || 4 ||
vājo nu te śavasas pātv antam uruṁ doghaṁ dharuṇaṁ deva rāyaḥ |
padaṁ na tāyur guhā dadhāno maho rāye citayann atrim aspaḥ || 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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