Mahāmṛtyuñjaya — the compound at its centre, opened
The popular claimOne Ṛgvedic verse. One simile about a cucumber. Everything else is what people say about it.
The verse is short enough to give whole, and its Sanskrit is what the rest of the page is about.
Tryambakaṁ yajāmahe sugandhiṁ puṣṭi-vardhanam · urvārukam iva bandhanān mṛtyor mukṣīya mā'mṛtāt.
Word by word
Tryambakam — the three-eyed one, or, in the older reading, the one with three mothers; the name is Rudra's, and the three eyes are the later understanding. Yajāmahe — we worship, we offer to. Sugandhim — the fragrant one. Puṣṭi-vardhanam — increaser of nourishment, of thriving; the one who makes things grow. So far: we offer to the three-eyed, the fragrant, who makes things flourish.
Urvārukam iva — as a cucumber, or a gourd. Bandhanāt — from its binding, its stem. The image is a ripe fruit that comes away from the vine of itself, without being pulled, when it is ready. Mṛtyoḥ — from death. Mukṣīya — may I be freed; the optative, a wish. Mā amṛtāt — not from immortality; may I not be freed from that.
So the request, plainly: as a ripe cucumber falls from its stem, may I be released from death — and not from the deathless. The mantra does not ask for death to be avoided. It asks for it to be like a fruit ripening, and for what is deathless not to be lost. Those who recite it in a hospital corridor are asking, in the verse's own words, for something quieter than they may think.
Where it sits
Ṛgveda 7.59.12 — the last verse of a hymn to the Maruts, the storm-gods, in the seventh maṇḍala attributed to Vasiṣṭha. It is the only verse in the hymn addressed to Rudra rather than his sons, and several scholars regard it as a late addition to that hymn, which does not make it late in absolute terms; the whole Ṛgveda is old. It recurs in the Yajurveda, in both the Taittirīya and Vājasaneyī recensions, in ritual contexts — the Taittirīya has it in the Tryambaka-homa, an offering to Rudra at the end of the Sākamedha, in which the offerings are made with the face averted, because Rudra is not looked at.
What the tradition built
The name Mahāmṛtyuñjaya — great conqueror of death — is not in the Veda; it is the later name of Śiva in this aspect, and the mantra took the name. The Śiva Purāṇa attaches the story of Mārkaṇḍeya, the boy fated to die at sixteen, who clung to the liṅga as Yama's noose fell and was saved when Śiva emerged and struck Yama down; the tradition holds that the verse was what he recited. The mṛtyuñjaya-japa — the mantra a hundred and twenty-five thousand times, usually by a group of priests over days — is the form in which it is commissioned for the seriously ill, and the mṛtyuñjaya-homa is the fire version. Neither is in the Ṛgveda. Both are in every pūjā-paddhati.
The oṁ and the bīja prefix
The version most people know begins oṁ and sometimes carries a string of bīja syllables — hauṁ jūṁ saḥ — before the verse and after it. These are Tantric additions of the medieval period, and the Ṛgvedic verse stands without them. A reciter should know which part is the Veda and which is the frame.
Timing
The tradition prefers the mantra in the brāhma-muhūrta, before dawn; on Mondays, Śiva's day; on Pradoṣa; on Mahā Śivarātri, above all, during the four prahara pūjās. None of this is in the verse. The panchang on this site marks Pradoṣa and Śivarātri for the reader's own city.
What this page does not say
It does not say the mantra cures illness, delays death, or does anything at all, and it does not say it does not. It gives the verse, the words, the image, the place in the Veda, and the tradition that grew around it. A reader who wants to recite it now knows what the words are asking for. That was the point.
Source — Rigveda 7.59.12, the Tryambaka verse, in the hymn to the Maruts attributed to Vasishtha; Yajurveda (Taittiriya Samhita 1.8.6.2 and Vajasaneyi Samhita 3.60) where it recurs; Shiva Purana, Rudra Samhita, for the Markandeya story the tradition attaches
Every claim on this site names its source, and every calculator shows its arithmetic.