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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Apām Napāt, the Child of the Waters: A God of Fire Born from the Flood
One Rigvedic hymn, RV 2.35, praises a golden god who shines without fuel at the bottom of the waters. Apām Napāt is the strangest figure in the Vedic pantheon, and the key to a fire-in-water myth older than India itself.
Are the Vedas Older Than the Bible? A Chronology of the World's Sacred Texts
The question 'which is older, the Vedas or the Bible?' turns out to be the wrong question. The right question is: older in what sense? Oral composition, written fixation, and final redaction give three different answers, and the gap between them can span a millennium. Here is the evidence, tradition by tradition.
Indra's 250 Hymns: War-God, Rain-Bringer, or Something Else Entirely?
Indra dominates the Rigveda like no other deity: roughly a quarter of the corpus is addressed to him. Yet the Indra of the hymns is stranger and more varied than the dragon-slayer of popular summary. He is a rain-bringer, a cosmic orderer, a drunkard, a doubter, and eventually a god whom later Hinduism will quietly demote.
The Soma Problem: What Did the Vedic Poets Actually Drink?
Mandala 9 of the Rigveda devotes 114 hymns to a single plant pressed, filtered and drunk at sacrifice. For over a century scholars have tried to identify it. The candidates include a psychoactive mushroom, a harmal shrub, ephedra, and cannabis. The hymns themselves may be the best evidence we have.
The Rig Veda and the Avesta: Shared Indo-Iranian Heritage of Hindus and Zoroastrians
The Rig Veda and the Zoroastrian Avesta are sister texts. Their languages, gods, rituals and even individual poetic lines preserve a common Indo-Iranian heritage that predates the split into Vedic and Iranian religion.