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Anonymous, Transl. Wendy DonigerThe Rig Veda: An Anthology
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Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Varuna”
Varuna was originally a sky-god, and, like Dyaus, he was a prominent figure in the proto-Indo-European pantheon. By the time of the Rig Veda, his role had changed into presiding over human conduct and punishing violators of sacred law. This chapter contains five hymns centered on Varuna’s deeds and sovereignty.
In Hymn 5.85, the poet recounts Varuna’s famous feats: separating the sky and earth; instilling speed in horses, milk in cows, and intelligence in the human heart; causing the rain to fall abundantly and the rivers to pour into the sea without filling the ocean. The hymn concludes with a prayer that Varuna should pardon anyone who has committed an offense against a friend or stranger, knowingly or not.
Two hymns refer to a tradition in which the sage Vasistha incites the anger of Varuna for a vague, indefinable sin and seeks expiation for his wrongdoing. In 7.86, Vasistha pleads ignorance of his offense and seeks the god’s mercy, advised by the poets that “’Varuna has been provoked to anger against you’” (213). Uncertain if he has committed an evil or has inherited his father’s or elder brother’s transgressions, the sage claims that wine, anger, dice, or carelessness caused the offense. He prostrates himself as a slave before his master, seeking to be freed from the god’s snares of disease or misfortune. In 7.88, Vasistha imagines seeing Varuna’s face as that of Agni, the fiery sun. The sage recalls when Varuna carried him across the ocean in the god’s boat, investing him with power, goodness, wisdom, and a long life. Looking back on their friendship, Vasistha laments that he may have committed a sin against his master and prays for protection against the god’s punishing wrath.
In “The House of Clay” (7.89), the poet prays for Varuna to preserve him from death. He stumbles and trembles before the god, fearful that he has committed an offense, or, through carelessness, has violated the sacred laws that Varuna upholds. The poet, afflicted by the god with dropsy, thirsts for Varuna’s merciful waters, which will restore him to grace.
Hymn 2.28 praises Varuna as the son of Aditi, asking the god who orders the rivers to loosen the poet from sin as from a sash that that binds him. As the emperor of Order, by whom the poet makes sacred vows, Varuna sustains his worshipper by his presence and mercy. The poet implores Varuna to protect him from fear and anguish and to abolish any debt for his misdeeds. He concludes by praying for the wealth and longevity of his generous friends.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Rudra and Visnu”
Rudra play a small role in the Rig Veda, but he will emerge in later Hinduism as the important god Siva. Rudra is a fierce, unpredictable, often wrathful deity, who has a complementary aspect as a healer and dispenser of medicine. The father of the Maruts, he occupies a marginal place in Vedic ritual—invoked in hymns but not invited to the Soma sacrifice. Similarly, Visnu is the focus of only a few hymns in the Rig Veda, but occupies a more conventional position in the Vedic pantheon and is frequently associated with Indra. In classical Hinduism, Visnu’s scope and importance will greatly expand; in the early Vedic period, he is known primarily for the three great strides by which he traverses the universe, separating the earth and the heavens. This chapter contains three hymns that illustrate Rudra’s and Visnu’s characters.
In Hymn 2.33, the poet prays that Rudra may spare him from his terrible wrath and protect him from disease, so that he may live for a hundred years. He invests the god with attributes usually linked to Indra: Rudra’s lips are full like the Soma-drinking Indra’s; he is bull-like and brandishes a thunderbolt. Rudra’s terrible power extends everywhere and mankind fears his name: “Let the weapon of Rudra veer from us; let the great malevolence of the dreaded god go past us” (222). The poet also appeals to Rudra’s healing art: “Where is your merciful hand, Rudra, so healing and cooling, that removes the injury that comes from the gods?” (222). Rudra is jealous of praise paid to other gods; the poet assures the deity he will not invoke another god alongside him. The hymn concludes with a plea that the awe-inspiring Rudra not become angered or kill his pious worshippers.
Placating the fierce god is similarly the focus of Hymn 1.114. The poet addresses Rudra, “the god with braided hair,” as the “tawny boar of the sky” who holds in his hands healing medicines (224). Courting the god’s favor with blandishments and euphemisms, the poet begs Rudra to withhold his “cow-killing and man-killing power” and grant his worshippers protection from the divine anger of the gods and the violence of men (225).
Hymn 1.154 describes the three strides of Visnu that established the earth and the heavenly abode of the gods. Visnu is like “a ferocious wild beast, in whose three wide strides all creatures dwell” (226). His three footprints support the earth and sky and all the creatures that live within; “his highest footstep,” the home of the gods, “is the fountain of honey” (226). Each of Visnu’s footprints is inexhaustibly full of honey or Soma, the sacrificial drink that unites the cosmos. The poet ends with a wish to go to the heavenly abode of Visnu and Indra, where many-horned cattle roam.
Chapters 11-12 Analysis
Varuna, along with his brothers Mitra and Aryaman, are Adityas, sons of the goddess Aditi. As a group, the Adityas preside over human society—the laws, customs, and alliances governing relations between members of the community and the interactions between tribes. Varuna’s name relates to the Sanskrit word for “commandment,” and he embodies judicial authority, the sovereignty of the king. In his role as cosmic sovereign, he ensures the prosperity of his people and punishes violations of rta, sacred law or order. The community’s welfare depends on the accessibility of rain and water for agriculture and herding; Varuna, accordingly, brings rain and governs the flow of rivers and streams. The god’s authority extends over the human and cosmic worlds: Hymn 5.85 neatly encapsulates his role in the creation of the universe and his sovereignty over nature and social interactions. Varuna instills creatures and matter with the essence of their being, the inner law of their nature: “he laid victory in swift horses and milk in the dawn cows, intelligence in hearts and fire in the waters” (211). His control over the rain and waters and his geometric organization of the sky and earth symbolize this cosmic law of order and proportion: “these shimmering torrents, pouring down, do not fill the one single ocean with their water” (211).
As the guardian of sacred law, Varuna punishes those who commit offences against the social order, and most of the hymns dedicated to him implore the god for mercy and release from the debt incurred by wrongdoing. Varuna’s anger is fearsome. He ensnares those guilty of violating the law with binding fetters: “O god, cast all these offences away like loosened bonds […] O king, free Vasistha […] like a calf set free from a rope” (211-214). Unconscious transgression is as blameworthy as willful misdoing, and guilt can pass from brother to brother, or generation to generation, incurring Varuna’s wrath. Hymn 7.86 exemplifies the fluid nature of sin and guilt in Vedic theology: “The mischief was not done by my own free will, Varuna; wine, anger, dice, or carelessness led me astray. The older shares in the mistakes of the younger. Even sleep does not avert evil” (214).
While Varuna is stern and formidable as the punisher of men’s wrongdoings, he is loving and merciful as well. In “The House of Clay” (7.89), the offending worshipper cries out for the grace of Varuna’s mercy, symbolized by the god’s medicinal waters, which are capable of curing the spiritual fever afflicting the transgressor: “Thirst has come upon the one who sings to you as he stands in the midst of waters; have mercy, great ruler” (217). The hymn’s theme of sin and expiation recurs through metaphors of disease and life-giving water, the aqua vitae of Varuna’s mercy. Varuna’s waters take on additional metaphorical significance in Hymn 7.88, a poignant expression of the intimate friendship between Varuna and man, and the desire to be reconciled with the sovereign god. Varuna carries Vasistha in the god’s boat across the ocean to see the sun hidden in the rock of darkness at night. In the glittering, pitching boat, Varuna makes Vasistha a seer and a poet, granting him long life. The metaphor of the night sea journey to the hidden sun of spiritual and poetic inspiration is an archetypal motif; Vasistha looks back nostalgically to that extraordinary experience as he laments his current alienation from the god. In these and other Vedic hymns, Varuna’s waters are the metaphorical currency of his favor toward men.
Rudra is an ambivalent deity who occupies a liminal role in the theology of the Rig Veda. Euphemistic epithets like “soft-hearted” and “kind” attempt to placate the ferocity of this awesome and terrible god. Like Indra, he is comparable to a bull and a leader of armies, and feared as a killer of men and cattle. Rudra’s jealousy of other gods in the Vedic pantheon apparently lies at the root of his exclusion from the Soma ritual: As the author of 2.33 states, “We would not wish to anger you, Rudra the bull, by acts of homage or ill praise, or by invoking you together with another god” (221). Though many gods are invoked in groups in the Rig Veda, offerings to Rudra are made separately, and hymns to the god express anxiety about properly demonstrating piety to win his favor. While feared as a god of destruction, Rudra is also a healer of maladies and soother of fevers. This ambivalence of character recalls other Indo-European gods such as the Greek Apollo, a physician whose deadly plague-carrying arrows strike down mortals. Despite his healing side, hymns to Rudra are largely placating in character, intended to divert or appease the god.
Though he is the father of Indra’s attendants, the Maruts, Rudra does not figure in the mythic narratives in which they play a significant role. Rudra’s association with Indra likely derives from their violent and destructive aspects, their connection with the Maruts, and their relation to intoxicating ritual drinks—the Soma prized by Indra and the hallucinogenic “poison” Rudra shares with the longhaired ascetic in Hymn 10.136.
Visnu, like Siva, plays a central role in later Hinduism but is a relatively minor figure in the pantheon and mythology of the Rig Veda. He is often associated with Indra, especially in Indra’s battle with Vrtra, as Hymn 4.18 in Chapter 7 demonstrates. Indra’s killing of Vrtra and Visnu’s three great strides are analogous acts of cosmic creation: Both demarcate the space within which things live. Visnu’s steps establish the bipartite universe: the realm of Earth and the “upper dwelling place” of the gods (226). The three strides of “wide-ranging” Visnu have solar symbolism, indicating dawn, noon, and sunset, or spring, summer and autumn. With his third step, Visnu disappears into his place of his heavenly refuge: “in his highest footstep, is the fountain of honey” (226). Each of Visnu’s world-creating footprints brims with an inexhaustible source of honey—the love of the gods, which acts like the intoxicating drink Soma—but the fountain of honey in the god’s secret dwelling-place is the nectar of immortality.
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