The Rig Veda Blog
Journeys into Vedic Thought
Long-form, researched essays on the deities, language, ritual and history of the Rig Veda. All free to read.
No articles match your search. Clear →
The Rig Veda Ends With a Meeting
After more than a thousand hymns to gods, storms and rivers, the Rigveda closes with four verses asking a group of people to agree. A few hymns earlier it preserves a charm for crushing the same gathering. Between them lies the oldest evidence for how Vedic people made decisions.
The God Inside the Slaughtered Horse: Reading the Aśvamedha Hymns (RV 1.162–1.163)
Two Rigvedic hymns, RV 1.162 and 1.163, narrate the killing of a horse and then insist the horse does not die. Read together, they open onto an Indo-European ritual older than India, a royal theater of sovereignty, and a quiet anatomy lesson hidden in a sacred poem.