Rudram, anuvāka 4 — the crafts, the castes, and the dogs
The popular claimCarpenters, potters, smiths, fowlers, hunters, dog-keepers, dogs. All Rudra.
The fourth anuvāka keeps the ca vo namaḥ form of the third's second half — obeisance to you, plural — and runs through the whole society of a Vedic settlement, ending with its dogs.
The armies and the ranks
Nama āvyādhinībhyo vividhyantībhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the surrounding hosts and those who pierce from every side.
Nama uganābhyas tṛṁhatībhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the great troops and those who crush. Ugaṇā — Sāyaṇa: the superior hosts.
Namo gṛtsebhyo gṛtsapatibhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the clever, and the lords of the clever. Gṛtsa — the skilled, or, in Sāyaṇa, the greedy; the word carries both.
Namo vrātebhyo vrātapatibhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the bands, and the lords of bands.
Namo gaṇebhyo gaṇapatibhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the troops, and the lords of troops. Gaṇapati — the name Gaṇeśa will carry — appears here as a title of Rudra's hosts.
Namo virūpebhyo viśvarūpebhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the misshapen, and those of every form. Virūpa — deformed, of odd shape; the tradition reads the pair as the ugly and the all-formed, both Rudra's.
Namo mahadbhyaḥ kṣullakebhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the great, and the small.
Namo rathibhyo'rathebhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To those with chariots, and those without.
Namo rathebhyo rathapatibhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the chariots, and the lords of chariots.
Namaḥ senābhyaḥ senānibhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the armies, and their leaders.
Namaḥ kṣattṛbhyaḥ saṅgrahītṛbhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the charioteers, and those who hold the reins. Kṣattṛ — the driver, later the word for a chamberlain.
The trades
Namas takṣabhyo rathakārebhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the carpenters, and the chariot-makers.
Namaḥ kulālebhyaḥ karmārebhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the potters, and the smiths. Kulāla — potter; karmāra — the metal-worker.
Namaḥ puñjiṣṭebhyo niṣādebhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the fowlers, and the Niṣādas. Puñjiṣṭa — Sāyaṇa: the bird-catcher, or the fisherman; niṣāda — the forest tribes outside the four varṇas. Rudra is bowed to as them.
Nama iṣukṛdbhyo dhanvakṛdbhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the arrow-makers, and the bow-makers.
Namo mṛgayubhyaḥ śvanibhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the hunters, and the dog-keepers.
Namaḥ śvabhyaḥ śvapatibhyaś ca vo namaḥ. — To the dogs, and the lords of dogs.
The dogs
The last clause is the one people remember. Śvabhyaḥ — to the dogs — in the dative, the same case as every other addressee in the Rudram. Rudra is bowed to as the dog. The commentators do not treat it as a difficulty: Rudra's hosts include the animals, the dog goes with the hunter, and the god is the whole. A reader coming from later Hinduism, where the dog is impure, should notice that the Yajurveda did not think so here; Bhairava's dog is a memory of this.
Who the section was written for
Carpenter, chariot-maker, potter, smith, fowler, fisherman, forest tribe, arrow-maker, bow-maker, hunter, dog-keeper. This is a list of the people who made and fed a settlement, and none of them is a priest. The Śatarudriya is chanted by brāhmaṇas, but the world it bows to is the whole working society, including those the later law-books placed outside it. That is a fact about the text, and it is one of the things that has kept it chanted.
The device
The pairs continue — great and small, with chariot and without, misshapen and all-formed — and the trade pairs are natural ones: carpenter and chariot-maker, potter and smith, arrow-maker and bow-maker, hunter and dog-keeper. Each pair is a workshop or a hunting party, and the god is both people in it.
What this page does not say
It does not make the fourth anuvāka a social argument — it is a list, and the reasons behind its inclusions are the commentators' inferences, not the text's statements. It gives the seventeen clauses with the words opened, so that a listener who has heard śvabhyaḥ śvapatibhyaś ca a hundred times knows that the Veda just bowed to the dog.
Source — Taittiriya Samhita 4.5.4 (Namakam, fourth anuvaka), Krishna Yajurveda; Sayana's bhashya on the Taittiriya; Bhattabhaskara's commentary on the Rudram
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