Journeys into Vedic Thought
Long-form, researched essays on the deities, language, ritual and history of the Rig Veda. All free to read.
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Seven Verses That Smell: The Rigveda's Missing Sense
The most widely chanted verse of the Rigveda calls a god sweet smelling. It is one of only seven verses in the entire collection that use a word for smell at all, and the other six are stranger than the silence around them.
The Goddess with One Hymn: Aranyani and the Rigveda's Only Song to the Forest
Of the Rigveda's 1,028 hymns, exactly one addresses the forest itself as a goddess, and that hymn asks her for nothing. A close reading of RV 10.146 opens onto a real scholarly argument about what the collection's margins can tell us.
What the Rigveda Says About Nature: Rivers, Fire, Dawn, and the Cosmic Order of Ṛta
The Rigveda is the oldest surviving record of how a literate culture saw the natural world. A close reading of its rivers, its fire-sciences, its dawn observations, and the principle of ṛta that holds them together.