Aryamanअर्यमन्

Aryaman is the god of what holds a community together.

He is one of the Adityas, named in the Rigveda's list of six at 2.27, and like most of them he has no hymn addressed to himself alone — he is invoked with Mitra and Varuna, constantly, in the formula that runs through the collection.

His name is built from arya: in the Vedic texts, a member of the community, one of us, and by extension the noble or the honourable. Aryaman is the personification of the bond that makes a set of households into a people — hospitality, the obligation to a guest, custom, the keeping of established usage, and above all marriage, the institution by which two families become kin.

And unlike almost every other deity in this Vedic tranche, he is still invoked, by name, in two rites that are performed constantly in India:

At a Hindu wedding, in verses descended from Rigveda 10.85, Aryaman is asked to release the bride from her father's house and to establish her in her husband's.

At a shraddha, the rite for the dead, he is invoked as the chief of the ancestors — a role the Bhagavad Gita confirms in a single line: pitṝṇām aryamā cāsmi, among the ancestors I am Aryaman.

The Milky Way is called aryamṇaḥ panthāḥ, Aryaman's path.

An Indo-European office. Aryaman has cognates that make his function unusually legible:

• Avestan Airyaman, invoked in the *Airyaman Ishya, one of the four great Gathic prayers of Zoroastrianism, where he is called on for healing* and for the welfare of the community.
• Irish Éremón, the legendary first Milesian king of Ireland.
• Gaulish Ariomanus, attested as a personal name.

The common ground is a deity or figure connected with the cohesion of the group — its internal peace, its hospitality, its marriages and its wellbeing. Dumézil treated Aryaman as the god of the arya community's internal relations, distinct from Mitra's contract, which binds two parties, and from Varuna's oath, which binds absolutely.

A note on the word *arya*. In the Vedic texts arya and ārya denote membership of the community and, derivatively, nobility of conduct; the contrast is with dāsa and dasyu, outsiders. It is a social and linguistic term. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century European racial theories built on the word — the "Aryan race" — have no basis in the Vedic material, were discredited as scholarship, and were used to catastrophic ends. This encyclopedia uses arya only in its textual sense and notes the distinction because the confusion is common and consequential.

His office in the hymns. Aryaman is invoked for: a guest received well; a friendship kept; a marriage made; a family line continued; the removal of hostility within the group; and the granting of ariṣṭi, unharmed condition. He is not invoked for victory, wealth or rain. His domain is entirely internal.

The Aditya function, and his share of it. With Mitra and Varuna he watches whether men keep their word; his specific concern is whether they keep it to their own.

Where he went. He is one of the twelve Adityas in the Puranic lists and one of the twelve names of the sun. He becomes the lord of the pitrs, the ancestors, which is his most consequential later office. And he keeps his place in the wedding — which is the only Vedic deity function in this whole tranche that has been performed continuously and by name for three thousand years without interruption or substitution.

None of his own. Aryaman was never depicted and has no attributes the hymns single out.

What he has instead:

A road in the sky. Aryamṇaḥ panthāḥ — Aryaman's path — is a Vedic name for the Milky Way. A god of the community given the largest visible road in the sky, the one everybody can see and nobody made, is an apt piece of naming, and it is his only concrete image.

The wedding fire. In practice, the object associated with him is the fire around which a marriage is performed, and the moment at which he is named — when the bride is released from one household and established in another.

The place laid for a guest. His domain in the domestic ritual literature: the meal owed to whoever arrives, which the Grihya Sutras treat as an obligation and not a courtesy.

As an Aditya. One of twelve identical figures at Konark, Modhera and Martand.

In the nakshatra scheme. Uttara Phalguni is his lunar mansion, and its symbol is a bed or the legs of a cot. That the marriage-god's star carries that symbol, and that Uttara Phalguni is among the most auspicious nakshatras for a wedding in Indian astrology, is a survival of his office in a system that has otherwise forgotten him.

Aryaman the Aditya. One of the six of RV 2.27 and of the Puranic twelve; oṃ aryamṇe namaḥ among the twelve solar names.

Aryaman, lord of the pitrs. His major later office. The Bhagavad Gita (10.29) names him among Krishna's vibhutis: pitṝṇām aryamā cāsmi — of the ancestors, I am Aryaman. In the shraddha literature he presides over the ancestral offering, and he is invoked in the rite.

Aryaman in the vivaha. The marriage god of the Grihya Sutras, invoked at the kanyadana and at the release of the bride.

Airyaman. The Iranian counterpart, invoked in the Airyaman Ishya — a prayer of four lines recited at the close of major Zoroastrian ceremonies and at weddings, asking for the community's welfare and for healing. Its use at Zoroastrian weddings is a direct parallel to the Indian usage and one of the better small proofs that the office is inherited rather than invented twice.

Aryama. The commonest Indian spelling, and a personal name.

Not Aryaman the asura, and not the Arya Samaj. Neither is connected. The Arya Samaj, founded by Dayananda Saraswati in 1875, takes its name from arya in its sense of noble, not from this deity.

He has none, and by now the reader of these Vedic pages will recognise the pattern: deities of successful social relations do not generate narrative.

What there is:

The wedding of Surya. RV 10.85 — the Suryavivaha, the marriage of the sun's daughter — is the longest and most important marriage text in Indian literature and the direct ancestor of the Hindu wedding as it is still performed. Soma is her first husband, then the Gandharva, then Agni, and last the human bridegroom; the procession, the bride's dress, the chariot, the two-day journey, the arrival at the new house and the blessings on the household are all described.

Aryaman's part in it is precise and is the reason he survives: he is asked to release the bride — from her father's house, from her natal bonds, from anything that would hold her back — and to establish her elsewhere without harm. He is the god of a transfer between households, which is what a marriage was understood to be.

The same hymn contains the verses used for the saptapadi and for the blessing on the bride, and it is recited or paraphrased at Hindu weddings across India today.

Aryaman's path. The Milky Way. The naming is the closest thing he has to a myth: the road that everybody's ancestors travel is his, which connects his marriage office to his ancestral one.

And the shraddha. In the rite for the dead the ancestors are invited, seated and fed, with Aryaman at their head and the Vishvedevas in attendance as guests. The whole rite is constructed out of the vocabulary of hospitality — invitation, seating, water for the feet, a meal — which is his domain exactly. The Indian rite for the dead is, formally, a dinner party, and the god who presides over it is the god of receiving guests. That is not a coincidence, and it is the most elegant thing about him.

At every Hindu wedding. Aryaman is invoked by name in the marriage rite, in verses descended from RV 10.85, at the point where the bride is given and released. The Grihya Sutras prescribe it and the purohita traditions have preserved it. Regional practice varies in wording, but he is present in the great majority of Vedic-rite Hindu weddings performed in India today.

By volume, this makes Aryaman one of the most frequently invoked Vedic deities in living Hinduism — and almost nobody at the wedding, including many of the participants, could say who is being addressed.

At every shraddha. As lord of the pitrs he is invoked in the ancestral rite, at Pitru Paksha, at death anniversaries, and at the offerings made at Gaya, Trimbakeshwar, Siddhpur and Brahmakapal.

In the Gita's tenth chapter, recited daily by very large numbers, where his name appears among Krishna's manifestations.

In Surya Namaskara, as one of the twelve names.

In the nakshatra system. Uttara Phalguni is his, and is among the nakshatras favoured for marriage. Astrologers selecting a wedding date are working within his jurisdiction whether or not they name him.

In hospitality. The atithi obligation — that a guest who arrives unannounced must be fed — is one of the five daily debts of a householder in the Manusmriti's scheme, and it is his domain. See the Vishvedevas page for the daily offering that belongs with it.

DharmSetu records these observances as practised and makes no claim about outcomes.

None. Aryaman has no temple, shrine or image anywhere in India.

Where he is present:

Wedding mandapas. Which is the honest answer, and an enormous number of them.

Shraddha sites. Gaya (Bihar) above all, where the ancestral rite is performed by very large numbers at Pitru Paksha; and Trimbakeshwar, Siddhpur, Brahmakapal at Badrinath, Rameswaram and Pehowa.

Sun temples. As one of twelve Adityas at Konark, Modhera and Martand.

Nakshatra shrines. Where the twenty-seven stars are represented, Uttara Phalguni is his.

Zoroastrian fire temples in India, where the Airyaman Ishya is recited — the Iranshah Atash Behram at Udvada and the Parsi and Irani agiaries of Mumbai, Navsari and Surat. As with Mitra, these are not Hindu sites and are not open to non-Zoroastrians; they are noted because the same inherited deity is addressed in them by name.

The pattern this tranche keeps producing holds here in its purest form: the god has no building, and his rites are performed several thousand times a day.

A god of belonging. Indra is about power, Varuna about truth, Agni about the offering. Aryaman is about being one of us — the guest fed, the marriage made, the quarrel inside the family not allowed to fester, the ancestors kept in the circle. It is the least dramatic of the Aditya offices and probably the one that mattered most day to day.

Marriage as a transfer, and what he was asked to do. His role in RV 10.85 is to release the bride and establish her without harm. That is a description of what an exogamous marriage did to a woman in that society — she left one household and entered another — and the rite asks a god to make the transition safe. Whatever one thinks of the institution being described, the request is a humane one, and it has been made continuously for three thousand years.

The rite for the dead is a dinner party. The shraddha's whole structure — invitation, seat, water for the feet, food, the guests who attend to see it done properly — is hospitality, and Aryaman presides. Indian religion's answer to the question of what the living owe the dead was not sacrifice or propitiation but having them round for a meal. That is his idea, and it is one of the warmest things in the tradition.

Continuity, unbroken and unrecognised. This is the tranche's clearest single case. Aryaman is invoked, by name, in the two rites that mark the beginning and the end of a Hindu life, and has been since before the Buddha. He has no temple, no image, no festival, no story and no devotees. He is a name in a formula, and the formula has never stopped being said. Set against Ushas, who had twenty-one hymns and vanished completely, it suggests that what preserves a Vedic deity is not devotion but being written into a rite that people keep needing to perform.

And the word. Arya in the Vedic texts means one of the community. The scholarly and political history of that word in the last two centuries is a separate and grim subject, and it is worth saying plainly that the deity has nothing to do with it: Aryaman is a god of hospitality and marriage, and the community he binds is defined by conduct and obligation, not by descent.