- इन्द्र
Indra — the largest presence in the Ṛgveda, and what happened to him
The god with the most hymns in the Veda is the one nobody worships now.
Roughly a quarter of the Ṛgveda is addressed to Indra — more than to any other deity. In later literature he is repeatedly outwitted, humbled and rescued. Both pictures are in the texts, and the distance between them is one of the most visible things in the whole tradition.
Read → - अग्निः
Agni — why the fire is the one who carries
The Ṛgveda's first word is his name. Every offering still goes through him.
Agni is the first word of the Ṛgveda and the god with the second-largest share of its hymns. He is the fire in the hearth, the fire on the altar, the fire in the sun and the lightning — and the messenger, the one who carries what is offered from the human to the divine. Why the Vedic poets made fire the priest; the three fires and the three births; how Agni survives into every hindu rite today, from the wedding to the cremation; and what he is not.
Read → - ऋतम्
Varuṇa — ṛta, and the oldest idea of an order that binds
Before there was karma there was ṛta, and Varuṇa was the one who kept it.
Varuṇa is the Ṛgveda's moral god — the one who sees every act, binds the liar with his noose, and keeps ṛta, the cosmic and ethical order that the later idea of dharma descends from. He is also the god who was demoted, from king of the gods to lord of the western sea, and the story of that demotion is the story of how the tradition changed. What ṛta meant; the hymns of confession to Varuṇa; his pairing with Mitra; and what happened to him after the Veda.
Read → - शिवः
Rudra to Śiva — one name across a very long road
In the Ṛgveda, śiva is an adjective. It took a thousand years to become the god.
The Śiva of the temples — the ascetic on Kailāsa, the dancer, the liṅga — is not in the Ṛgveda. What is there is Rudra: the howler, the archer, the god you ask to keep his arrows away, addressed in three hymns and feared in all of them. The road from that Rudra to this Śiva runs through the Śatarudriya, the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, and the Purāṇas, and every stage left a mark on the god. The stages, in order; what each added; and which parts of the temple Śiva come from where.
Read → - विष्णुः
Viṣṇu across the layers — three strides to everything after
A minor Ṛgvedic god with one famous act became the one who holds the world together.
Viṣṇu has five hymns in the Ṛgveda and one deed: he strode three times and measured out the worlds. From that act — and from an identification with the sacrifice in the Brāhmaṇas — grew the Viṣṇu of the epics and Purāṇas, the sustainer, the god of the avatāras, Rāma and Kṛṣṇa. The layers in order: the strider, the sacrifice, the one who lies on the serpent, the one who descends. What each text added, and how a small god became the largest.
Read → - अश्विनौ
The Aśvins — the physicians, and the stories nobody retells
Fifty hymns, the third-largest share of the Ṛgveda. Almost no one alive prays to them.
The Aśvins are the twin horsemen of the Ṛgveda, the gods' physicians, who come at dawn in a three-wheeled chariot to rescue the drowning, restore the blind, give the old man back his youth and put a bronze leg on a warrior. They have more hymns than any god but Indra and Agni, and they have vanished from living worship almost entirely. What the hymns say they did; the story of Cyavana, the one that survived; their Greek cousins; and why the physicians of the gods have no temple.
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Also in this section, being written
These are names, not promises. A page appears here only once it cites its sources, which is why none of them carries a date.