Stotra · स्तोत्रMantra

Aditya Hridayam — Rashmimantam

Agastya's instruction to Rama: worship the rising sun — Aditya Hridayam 6.

Aditya Hridayam 6edition

Sanskrit · संस्कृत

रश्मिमन्तं समुद्यन्तं देवासुरनमस्कृतम् । पूजयस्व विवस्वन्तं भास्करं भुवनेश्वरम् ॥

raśmimantaṃ samudyantaṃ devāsuranamaskṛtam । pūjayasva vivasvantaṃ bhāskaraṃ bhuvaneśvaram ॥

Read in another script

No verified recitation yet. We publish audio only with a named reciter and a recorded licence, rather than files of unknown provenance.

Meaning

Worship him who is possessed of rays, who is rising, who is saluted by gods and asuras alike — Vivasvat, the maker of light, sovereign of the worlds.

This rendering is by a DharmSetu editor, not a quotation from a published translation. Compare with the public-domain translation.

A Hindi meaning has not been written for this mantra yet. Hindi is authored by a named editor rather than machine-translated, so it arrives more slowly.

How to recite

Anushtubh, two lines of sixteen syllables. Traditionally recited facing the rising sun. समुद्यन्तं and विवस्वन्तं both end in -antam and are accusative participles agreeing with the unstated object of pūjayasva; keep them parallel. भास्करम् is bhāskaram, 'light-maker', with a long ā — not bhaskaram.

Repetitions: 1 · 3 · 11
Time: sunrise, brahma muhurta

Pronunciation key — sounds commonly got wrong

ट ठ ड ढ ण · ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ: Retroflex — the tongue curls back and touches the roof of the mouth. Distinct from the dental त थ द ध न, where the tongue touches the teeth.
श ष स · ś ṣ s: Three different sounds: ś as in “shy”, ṣ retroflex and further back, s plain. Collapsing them changes words.
ः · ḥ (visarga): A soft outward breath echoing the preceding vowel — not a hard “ha”.
ं · ṃ (anusvara): Nasalises the vowel; the closing sound follows the consonant that comes next.
Long vs short vowels — a / ā, i / ī, u / ū: Vowel length is meaningful in Sanskrit. Hold the macron vowels roughly twice as long.
Aspirated consonants — kh, gh, ch, th, dh, ph, bh: A distinct puff of breath. ph is an aspirated p, never an English “f”.

Word by word

रश्मिमन्तम्raśmimantam: possessed of rays(acc. sg.)MW1899-CDSL p.869
समुद्यन्तम्samudyantam: rising, ascending(acc. sg. pres. part.)MW1899-CDSL p.1167
देवासुरनमस्कृतम्devāsuranamaskṛtam: saluted by gods and asuras(acc. sg.)MW1899-CDSL p.495
पूजयस्वpūjayasva: worship(2nd sg. mid. impv.)MW1899-CDSL p.641
विवस्वन्तम्vivasvantam: Vivasvat, the shining one(acc. sg.)MW1899-CDSL p.987
भास्करम्bhāskaram: the maker of light(acc. sg.)MW1899-CDSL p.756
भुवनेश्वरम्

Context

The Aditya Hridayam is set at the hardest moment of the Ramayana: Rama is exhausted on the battlefield, Ravana is standing before him ready to fight, and the sage Agastya comes down with the gods to give him this hymn. This verse is the first actual instruction in it — everything before is frame. The single imperative is pūjayasva, 'worship'. What follows is not a claim about what will happen but a description of what is to be looked at: the sun as it rises, with its rays, saluted by both sides of the cosmic divide. devāsura-namaskṛtam is doing careful work — gods and asuras agree on nothing else, and the verse offers Rama an object of attention that stands outside the war he is in the middle of. Sarga numbering differs between recensions: Yuddha Kanda 105 in the southern and Gita Press editions, 107 in some others. The source_reference here is the verse number within the hymn itself, which is stable.

Shadanga — the six limbs

The traditional analytic frame for a mantra. Blank limbs are simply not recorded for this text.

rishi: Agastya
chhanda: Anushtubh
devata: Surya

Recited at / traditionally recited for

Daily sandhya Dhyana (meditation)

Classified as Stotra — Devotional hymn literature — praise poetry rather than a Vedic formula. Basis for this classification.

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