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 Long-Haired One: Reading the Keśin Hymn (RV 10.136) and the Vedic Roots of Ecstasy
A close reading of the Rigveda's strangest seven verses, where wind-girdled ascetics fly with the gods and drink poison beside Rudra. What this hymn does and does not tell us about the origins of yoga, asceticism, and ecstatic flight in ancient India.
Of the Same Age, in the Same Nest: The Maruts and the Indo-European War-Band
The Maruts are the Rigveda's storm troop: dozens of young men of one age, armed, loud, and devoted to Indra. A line of scholarship reads them as the divine mirror of a real institution, the Indo-European youth war-band. The reading is powerful, and its history is uncomfortable.
The God You Pray Away: Rudra, the Archer Who Heals, and the Long Prehistory of Śiva
Rudra gets only three hymns in the Rigveda, yet he is the most carefully handled god in the collection. The poets praise his arrows so he will aim them elsewhere, and call him kind so he will become so. This is how a feared archer turned into Śiva.