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The Rig Veda: An Anthology
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Chapter 13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “Realia”
The Rig Veda celebrates the pleasures of life; it is a very worldly sacred text. Renunciation of the material world or its pleasures for an ascetic spiritual quest, an important part of later Hindu religion, is an attitude almost entirely absent from it. The worshipper invokes the Vedic gods to provide the things he wants: wealth, cattle, victory in battle and on the racecourse, lasting friendships, erotic joy, longevity, and progeny. While many Rig Veda hymns focus on the gods or the Soma sacrifice, the hymns in this chapter are primarily celebrations of the natural world and the good things in life.
Two hymns commemorate the waters as the life-giving element that rejuvenates and purifies the body and soul. In 10.9, the poet appeals to the waters as loving mothers or goddesses who nurture with their milk, bringing health and well-being. Their cure is like “an armor for [the] body,” giving longevity, purifying his heart and soul, and removing the taint of any deceitful malice he has committed by washing away his offences (231). Soma has told the poet that all cures exist within the waters, and that Agni, the god of fire, dwells within the watery depths. The hymn ends with an invocation to Agni: “O Agni full of moisture, come and flood me with splendor” (231).
In a short hymn (7.49), the poet addresses the waters with the repeated refrain, “Let the waters, who are goddesses, help me here and now” (232). The waters purify themselves, never resting; freed by Indra, they seek the ocean as their goal. In the midst of pure and clear waters that drip with honey, Varuna looks down upon the true and false deeds of men. Soma, Agni, and all the gods who ecstatically drink the nectar of immortality, move among the blessed waters.
Water also plays a central role in a clever hymn celebrating the chorusing of frogs during the breeding season (7.103). In an elaborate pun, the poet compares the singing frogs to chanting Brahmin priests, both of whom stir to action at the start of the rainy season. After lying still for a year, they raise their voices, echoing each other like cows and their calves, or like pupils responding to their teacher. The sweating frogs, obeying the sacred calendar, are like officiating priests sweating over the cauldron of the sacrifice. The hymn ends by praising the frogs as patrons sponsoring the sacrifice: “By giving hundreds of cows, the frogs have prolonged life in a thousand Soma-pressings” (234).
Hymn 9.112, ostensibly a work song for the pressing of Soma, is a paean to worldly desire and a celebration of diversity. The poet observes that each creature seeks wealth or pleasure in the forms that most please it: “the harnessed horse longs for a light cart; seducers long for a woman’s smile […] and the frog for water” (235). Our thoughts and desires lead us to differing vocations—the carpenter seeks something broken to fix, while the physician seeks a fracture to heal—yet the goal of all is wealth and satisfaction.
Hymn 6.75 is a benediction spoken over the weapons of the king or a consecration of warriors before battle. The poem describes each element of the arsenal in turn, praising its deadly efficiency. The poet prays that the metaphorical armor of prayer as well as the soldier’s breastplate and mail will protect the combatant. The drawn bowstring of the archer comes up to his ear like a woman whispering; his quiver is the father of the arrows. The poet likens the arrow to an eagle, with a mouth of iron smeared with poison and sharpened with prayer. Arrows fall upon the enemy as thick as the locks of untrimmed hair on boys. The charioteer skillfully drives his horses; they trample down their foes. The warriors drink Soma for strength and inspiration; the poet prays that their bodies will be like stone, impermeable to the enemy’s blows. The hymn concludes by invoking Brahmanaspati, Aditi, Soma, and Varuna, asking the gods for shelter and victory.
A delicate lyrical hymn to the spirit of the forest describes the fear and mirages that overtake a traveler lost in the woods in the evening (10.146). The female spirit of the wilderness is the mother of wild beasts and dispenser of sweet scents and food. As night falls, the sounds of the forest are misleading: The traveler longing for home imagines hearing someone calling his cow, cutting wood, or crying out. He consoles himself, thinking the forest spirit does not kill—though demons and beasts roaming the woods at night might do so. He praises the gentle, peaceful goddess who seems to shy away from him into the forest depths.
Chapter 13 Analysis
The hymns of this chapter demonstrate the rich diversity of subject matter and tone permeating the literary environment of the Rig Veda. Though primarily focused on the Soma sacrifice and the invocation of the major Vedic gods associated with the ritual, the Rig Veda embraces a worldly attitude toward human existence, expressing throughout an interest in, and desire for, the full range of life’s pleasures. Formal liturgies of ritual exist side by side by with evocative lyrical poetry shedding light on domestic life and the intimate subjectivity of the human mind and heart. Many of these hymns embodying “popular” themes are collected in Book 10, the final addition to the codified text of the Rig Veda.
Though superficially dedicated to the pressing of Soma, the theme of Hymn 9.112 is that human labor and goals move toward one end, the satisfaction of desire. Each living being seeks ease and pleasure according to its nature, the poet observes in a gently wry tone. The informal style and colloquial language of the poem evoke a work song and a scene of domestic industry rather than the ceremony of solemn ritual. Just as “all strive for wealth,” so let the “drop of Soma flow for Indra,” the poem’s refrain casually suggests. The pressing of the sacred liquid symbolizes the universal satisfaction of desire that the hymn describes in various forms—the yearning of the frog for water, the poet for inspiration, the blacksmith for a rich customer.
Other hymns suggest that the Vedic concept of the sacred extends beyond the ritual world into the deepest recesses of nature and the sphere of human activities. Hymn 10.9 elaborates a typical Vedic paradox: the intimate relationship of water and fire as sacred media of transformation. The waters cleanse and nourish, physically and spiritually; they are goddesses whose “delicious sap” flows like breast milk from loving mothers to sustain their children. The waters are a panacea, pregnant with transformative power. Soma, either the sacred drink or its deified personification, reveals to the poet that the hidden god Agni dwells within the depths as well; the poet imbibes the god and radiates divine splendor as he immerses himself. The trope develops its paradoxical implication in the next verse: The waters’ are an armor enabling the poet to see the sun (i.e., live) for a long time, just as he literally sees the fiery god in the waters of rejuvenation. The parallel development of the waters’ literal and symbolic meanings characterizes much Vedic poetry, contributing to its semantic density and richness.
Hymn 7.103, dedicated to the frogs, follows a similar parallel structure of literal and metaphorical meanings. Read as a naturalistic poem, it depicts the annual awakening of the frogs during breeding season as they gather and chorus in pools. Each verse, however, similarly represents Brahmin priests as they chant at the start of the rainy season. The similarity of the communal and repetitive vocalizations of amphibians and priests, each obeying the natural and sacred laws of the season, forms the unlikely metaphor the hymn cleverly elaborates. The poem’s deft balancing of tone as it develops its parallel strains of imagery creates ambiguity: some scholars see the hymn as a satirical dig at the priesthood while others interpret the sacerdotal imagery of frogs gathering like Brahmins around the soma vat as sanctifying the natural world.
Unlike most of the gods in the Rig Veda, the forest spirit in Hymn 10.146 is shy and gentle, seeming to retreat before the poet like a frightened creature of the deep woods. The poem’s delicate sensibility and evocative imagery suggest a world halfway between fantasy and reality, represented by the twilight setting. The lyrical quality of the speaker’s apprehension and misgivings, projected onto the forest spirit, conveys a world far removed from the heroic staging of many other Vedic poems. The contrasts between forest and village, danger and safety, solitude and community, night and daylight, and confidence and trepidation form the basis of the poem’s economical exploration of a solitary wanderer’s fears and attempts to comfort himself in the darkening woods.
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