Vedic Deities

The Sons of Aditi, Sovereigns of the Rita

The sovereign gods of the Rigveda — Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga and their brothers — sons of the boundless Aditi, who watch without blinking and bind the man who breaks his word. Six or seven in the Veda, twelve by the Puranas, one for each month of the sun's year.

The God You Could Drink

A plant, its pressed juice, and a god — one thing, addressed by the whole of the Rigveda's ninth book. Nobody now knows what the plant was, the ritual that needed it is still performed with substitutes, and the name ended up on the moon.

Daughter of the Sky

The dawn: twenty-one hymns, the finest poetry in the Rigveda, and a goddess who wakes every living thing and wastes a little of everyone's life doing it. Cognate with Eos, Aurora and Easter — and almost completely forgotten in India.

The Cosmic Person

A thousand-headed being sacrificed by the gods, from whose body the worlds, the Vedas, the animals and the four varnas are made. Sixteen verses, recited daily in Vaishnava temples — and the single most consequential passage in Indian social history.

The Sacred Fire

Fire as a deity, and the deity with whom the Rigveda opens. The intermediary who carries offerings from humans to the gods — and, though he has almost no temples, the god present at more Hindu rites than any other.

King of the Gods

King of the gods and the dominant deity of the Rigveda, to whom roughly a quarter of its hymns are addressed — and the clearest case in Hindu religion of a supreme god who lost his position. Now a figure of cosmology and narrative rather than of worship.

The Wind

The wind as a deity, and the breath within the body — the same word, prana, covers both. Father of Hanuman and Bhima, guardian of the northwest, and in the Dvaita tradition the highest being after Vishnu.

Lord of Waters and Oaths

Guardian of cosmic order and of oaths in the Rigveda, and lord of the waters thereafter. The Vedic deity with the most developed moral character — and the one whose decline is the sharpest in the whole tradition.

Lord of Death and Dharma

The god of death, who was also the first man to die — and, as Dharmaraja, the judge who assigns the consequences of a life. The deity most people would rather not name, and the teacher of the Katha Upanishad.

Mother of the Vedas

The goddess of the verse recited at dawn, noon and dusk by more people than any other in Hinduism. Five-faced, swan-borne, called Vedamata — and the subject of a long, uncomfortable and now largely resolved argument about who was permitted to say her mantra.

The Twin Physicians of the Gods

Twin horsemen of the Vedic dawn, invoked in some four hundred Rigvedic hymns — and the only physicians among the gods. They gave a warrior an iron leg, restored a blind man's sight, made an old sage young, and had to have their share of the soma won for them because healing was beneath a god.

Architect of the Worlds

The craftsman of the gods, who built Lanka, Dwarka and the flying chariot, forged the discus and the trident, and left the images at Puri unfinished when he was interrupted. His festival is kept in factories and workshops, and the object worshipped is a tool.

The Storm Troop

A band of young gods who arrive together in gold and noise, break the trees, bring the rain and stand at Indra's shoulder — and once quarrelled with him and were talked round. Thirty-three hymns in the Rigveda, and almost nothing afterwards.

All the Gods, Named and Unnamed

Some seventy Rigvedic hymns are addressed not to a god but to all of them at once — the insurance clause of Vedic religion, and the ancestor of the portion of food an Indian household still sets aside before anyone is served.

The Craftsmen Who Became Gods

Three brothers who were born men and became gods by workmanship — they made a chariot without wood, a cow out of a hide, and Tvashtr's one cup into four. The only beings in the Rigveda who earn divinity with their hands.

The Impeller

Not the sun, but the power that sets things moving — golden-handed, working in the dark before sunrise and after sunset. Eleven hymns, one of the finest in the Rigveda, and the deity of the verse that a hundred million people still recite every morning.

The Contract

The god who is an agreement. One hymn to himself in the whole Rigveda, twenty-three shared with Varuna — and an afterlife in Iran and Rome larger than anything he achieved in India, where his name survives as the ordinary word for friend.

Lord of the Roads

A pastoral god who knows every path, finds what is lost, guards travellers and leads the dead to the fathers — and who has no teeth, and eats gruel. Eight hymns, and the closing verses of the Isha Upanishad.

The Unbound

A goddess whose name means boundlessness, who has not a single hymn addressed to her alone, and of whom the Rigveda says: Aditi is the sky, the air, the mother, the father and the son; Aditi is all the gods and everything that has been born and is yet to be born.

The Broad One

The earth: one Rigvedic hymn to herself, six shared with the sky, and the sixty-three verses of the Atharvaveda's Bhumi Sukta — the finest hymn to the earth in Indian literature, whose line "the earth is my mother and I am the son of the earth" is quoted wherever Indians argue about the environment.

Speech, Who Speaks for Herself

One hymn, eight verses, spoken in the first person by a goddess who says she carries Mitra and Varuna, makes whom she loves into a sage, and pervades heaven and earth. The oldest text the Shakta tradition claims, and it is recited at every Durga Saptashati.

The Rain Cloud

Three hymns to the monsoon, and among them the best description of a storm arriving in Sanskrit literature. A bull who roars, lays seed in the plants and floods the world — and who lost his job to Indra.

The Waters, Who Are Mothers

Four Rigvedic hymns to the Waters, always feminine and always plural. Of every deity in this encyclopedia, they are the one whose worship never stopped: their verse is said at every Hindu bath, sipping and consecration, and has been for three thousand years.

Night, Who Is Asked to Be Easy to Cross

Eight verses to the Night, who comes looking about with many eyes, sends the birds to their nests and the cattle to their stalls, and is asked to keep off the wolf and be easy to get across. One of the few Vedic goddesses who made it into living Shakta liturgy.

The Forest, Who Does Not Ask After the Village

Six verses to the goddess of the wilderness — the only hymn of its kind in the Rigveda, and the finest nature writing in it. She has no cult, no temple and no descendants; what she named survives in the sacred groves.

The Bond of the Community

The Aditya of hospitality, custom and marriage — with no hymn of his own, a road in the sky named after him, and a place in two rites that Hindus still perform: he is invoked when a bride leaves her father's house, and he is the chief of the ancestors at every shraddha.

The Apportioner

A minor Aditya who divides out what each person gets, blinded at Daksha's sacrifice, with no hymn of his own — and whose name became the ordinary Indian word for God, the Slavic word for God, and the word every Indian uses for luck.

The Fire That Lives in the Water

A golden being who stands upright inside the waters and shines there without fuel. One Rigvedic hymn, an Iranian counterpart who guards the glory of kings at the bottom of a lake, and an Irish cousin whose well drowns anyone who looks in wrongly.

Un-Order, and the South-West Corner

The goddess of decay, misfortune and dissolution — worshipped not to be favoured but to leave. Her offerings are black, made at night on broken pots, facing away. Her name is why every Indian vastu consultant says nairritya.

Shachi, Whose Name Means Power

Indra's wife, who says in her own Rigvedic hymn that she is the banner and the head and that her husband will do as she says. Speaker of one of the strangest dialogues in the Veda, outwitter of a usurper, and — as Aindri — one of the Seven Mothers carved in temples across India.

The First Man, and the Book He Did Not Write

The first man and the flood survivor, whose name is the root of the word human — and whose name was later attached to a law book that Ambedkar publicly burned in 1927.

The Sage Who Kicked God in the Chest

The Rigvedic sage who tested the three gods and kicked Vishnu awake to do it — and whose footprint Vishnu kept on his chest as an ornament. Father of Shukra and ancestor of Parashurama.

The Father of Nearly Everything

The sage who married thirteen of Daksha's daughters and fathered the gods, the asuras, the nagas, the birds and the animals. Almost every conflict in Hindu mythology is a family quarrel in his house.

The Obstruction

The serpent who held the waters, killed by Indra with a thunderbolt made from a sage's bones. The Rigveda's central story — and by the end of it, a brahmin whose murder Indra could not wash off.

The Wife Who Could Not Look at Him

Surya's wife, who could not endure her husband's heat, left her shadow in her place and ran away as a mare — and whose father solved it by putting the sun on a lathe.

The Star Beside the Star

Rama's guru and the Rigveda's seventh book, who lost a hundred sons to a rival's revenge and tried four times to kill himself. His wife Arundhati is shown to every Hindu couple at their wedding.

The Sky Father Who Faded

The Vedic sky father — the same word as Zeus and Jupiter, and the clearest surviving Indo-European deity in Hinduism. He has no temple, no festival and almost no hymns of his own.

The Eight Who Stole a Cow

Eight Vedic deities of the elements, attendants of Indra — who stole a sage's cow, were cursed to be born as men, and were drowned at birth by their mother. The eighth was Bhishma.