Rudram, anuvāka 2 — the lord of every place
The popular claimGolden-armed general, lord of the directions — and lord of the trees, the paths, the food and the fields.
The first anuvāka asked Rudra to put down the bow. The second begins the work of the other nine: bowing to him as the lord of everything, one domain per clause. The pattern here is namo X-āya Y-āya Z-ānāṁ pataye namaḥ — obeisance to the one who is X, who is Y, lord of the Z, obeisance. Fourteen times.
The clauses
Namo hiraṇyabāhave senānye diśāṁ ca pataye namaḥ. — To the golden-armed, the general, and the lord of the directions. Hiraṇyabāhu — arms of gold; senānī — leader of the army; diśāṁ pati — the directions are his to command.
Namo vṛkṣebhyo harikeśebhyaḥ paśūnāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the trees, the green-haired, and the lord of animals. Rudra is not only lord of the trees; the trees are addressed as him — vṛkṣebhyaḥ, to the trees, in the dative plural — and harikeśa, green-haired, is the foliage. Paśupati appears here, the name that Śaivism will take for its oldest sect.
Namaḥ saspiñjarāya tviṣīmate pathīnāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the one the colour of young grass, the radiant, the lord of paths. Saspiñjara — tawny like new grass; Sāyaṇa takes it as the colour of the rising sun.
Namo babhluśāya vivyādhine'nnānāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the one on the bull, the piercer, the lord of food. Babhluśa — Sāyaṇa: the rider of the bull; vivyādhin — the one who pierces through, the archer's word.
Namo harikeśāyopavītine puṣṭānāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the green-haired, the one who wears the sacred thread, the lord of the well-nourished.
Namo bhavasya hetyai jagatāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the weapon of Bhava, the lord of the worlds. Bhava is one of Rudra's eight names; the weapon of existence itself.
Namo rudrāyātatāvine kṣetrāṇāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To Rudra with the drawn bow, lord of the fields. Ātatāvin — one whose bow is stretched.
Namaḥ sūtāyāhantyāya vanānāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the charioteer, the unslayable, lord of the forests. Ahantya — who cannot be killed.
Namo rohitāya sthapataye vṛkṣāṇāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the red one, the master-builder, lord of the trees. Sthapati is the word for architect; Rudra is the one who built.
Namo mantriṇe vāṇijāya kakṣāṇāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the counsellor, the merchant, lord of the thickets. The god is a trader here, and the commentators do not soften it.
Namo bhuvantaye vārivaskṛtāyauṣadhīnāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the one who spreads the world, who makes wealth, lord of herbs. Bhuvanti — Sāyaṇa: the one who extends the earth.
Nama uccairghoṣāyākrandayate pattīnāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the loud-voiced, the one who makes cry out, lord of foot-soldiers. The war-shout.
Namaḥ kṛtsnavītāya dhāvate satvanāṁ pataye namaḥ. — To the one who surrounds completely, who runs, lord of the warriors. Kṛtsnavīta — encompassing all.
What the section is doing
Fourteen domains — direction, animal, path, food, growth, world, field, forest, tree, thicket, herb, foot-soldier, warrior. Rudra is the lord of the wild and the cultivated, the road and the army, the physician and the general. By the end of this anuvāka he is no longer the marginal god of the first, whose bow had to be talked down; he is the one every place belongs to. The third and fourth will push it further, to the thieves and the dogs.
The rhythm
The double namaḥ — one at the front, one at the end of each clause — is what a listener hears as the Namakam's beat. The chanters take the clause as a unit, with the svara marks rising and falling on the accented syllables; Taittirīya recitation preserves the Vedic pitch accent, which is why it sounds the way it does and why it is not sung.
What this page does not say
It does not decide between Sāyaṇa's and Bhaṭṭabhāskara's readings where they differ — babhluśa and saspiñjara are both argued over — and it does not claim any effect for the recitation. It gives the fourteen clauses with their words, so that the sound a listener knows becomes a list they can read.
Source — Taittiriya Samhita 4.5.2 (Namakam, second anuvaka), Krishna Yajurveda; Sayana's bhashya on the Taittiriya; Bhattabhaskara's and Abhinava Shankara's commentaries on the Rudram
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