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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The Two Mitras and the Two Varuṇas: The Rig Veda's Grammar of Pairs
Vedic Sanskrit has a separate grammatical form for exactly two, and the Rigveda's gods obey it. Fifty-seven hymns are addressed not to a god but to a couple, and the name of the most famous couple literally says 'the two Mitras, the two Varuṇas'.
The Tight Spot: What the Rig Veda Asks For When It Asks To Be Saved
The Rigveda's commonest word for trouble, aṃhas, literally means narrowness. Its commonest word for rescue means to make wide. Follow that one pair of words and the whole text starts to look like a set of instructions for getting out of tight places.
Māyā Before It Meant Illusion
Everyone knows māyā means illusion. The Rigveda does not. In roughly eighty verses the word names a hard, practical power to make forms and measure things out, and gods and demons wield it in equal measure.
The Word That Became Zen Appears Once in the Rigveda
The ancestor of dhyāna, jhāna and zen turns up exactly one time in the Rigveda, and not where anyone expects: in a workshop, describing craftsmen who built a chariot out of their minds. What the oldest Indian poetry actually says about attention is stranger, and more useful, than the version on the meditation app.