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 Fault Called Sameness: Jāmi and the Vedic Distrust of Things Too Alike
In the Rig Veda, jāmi means your sister. A few centuries later the same word is the technical name for a ritual mistake: two acts too much alike to produce anything. Following one word across that gap turns up a Vedic theory of what sameness can and cannot make.
The Rigveda Has No Word for West
Sanskrit's ordinary word for west, paścimā, never appears in the Rigveda. Its poets located themselves with a different set of words: in front, behind, above, below, and the right hand. The result is a map of the world drawn from a standing body facing the sunrise.
The Sister Nobody Sang To: The Rigveda's One Hymn to Night (RV 10.127)
The Rigveda gives Dawn some twenty hymns and her sister Night exactly one. This is a close reading of that lone hymn to Rātrī, why the poets sang so little to the dark, and how a minor Vedic goddess grew into the cosmic Night of later Hinduism.
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.
Women in the Rig Veda: Rishikas, Goddesses, and What the Hymns Actually Say
About 30 hymns of the Rig Veda are traditionally attributed to women composers — the *Rishikas*. The Veda also names a complete pantheon of goddesses, including Vāc Āmbhṛṇī whose Devī Sūkta (10.125) is one of the most striking first-person hymns in any ancient literature.
Vedic Gods Across the Indo-European World: From Dyaus Pitar to Zeus
Dyaus Pitar = Zeus = Jupiter. Uṣas = Eos = Aurora. Indra slaying Vṛtra = Apollo slaying Python = Thor and Jörmungandr. How comparative philology reconstructs the religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans — with the Rig Veda as the most conservative witness.
Ushas: Goddess of Dawn and the Most Beautiful Poetry of the Rig Veda
The dawn-hymns of the Rig Veda are widely considered the corpus's finest poetry. Ushas — Uṣas — is praised in twenty hymns of unusual lyricism. A reading of the dawn-cycle and what makes it the high-water mark of Vedic verse.