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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Homage Rules the Gods: The Rigveda's Strangest Offering
In the Rigveda, namas is not a feeling and not a greeting. It is a thing poets carry to the fire alongside firewood and butter, a substance that holds up the earth and sky, cancels sin, and gets paid to a handful of gambling nuts.
I Take Counsel With My Own Body: The Rigveda's Word for Self
When a Rigvedic poet needs to say I asked myself, he says he consulted his body. The word is tanū, from a root meaning to stretch, and it does the work that atman would later do. Watching the handover happen changes what the Veda looks like.
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.
Croaking Like Priests: The Frog Hymn (RV 7.103)
A whole Rig Veda hymn is addressed to frogs, who chant after the first rains 'like Brahmins at a sacrifice.' A sourced reading of Vedic satire, humour and the riddle.
A World Without Blue: Colour Words in the Rig Veda
The Rig Veda has rich words for bright, ruddy and golden, but no settled word for 'blue.' A sourced look at Vedic colour vocabulary and what it does and does not tell us about perception.
The Maruts: A Storm Set to Verse
The Maruts are the Rig Veda's storm-troop, a band of young gods who shake the mountains and bring the rain. A sourced reading of their hymns and their poetics of weather.
When Speech Speaks: Vac and the Devi Sukta (RV 10.125)
In RV 10.125 the goddess Vac, Speech herself, talks in the first person and claims to hold the gods together. A sourced reading of the Vedic philosophy of language.
A Bronze Age Tape Recording: How the Rig Veda Was Memorised
Padapatha, samhitapatha and the woven recitations that turned memory into an error-correcting code, plus the UNESCO recognition.
Counting the Sacred: The Meters of the Rig Veda
How chandas works: Gayatri, Tristubh and Jagati, the syllable counts behind the Rig Veda, and why meter doubled as a preservation tool.