Rig Veda · 1024 of 1027
Mandala 10: HYMN CLXXXVII. Agni.
1.To Agni send I forth my song, to him the Bull of all the folk: So may he bear us past our foes.
2.Who from the distance far away shines brilliantly across the wastes: So may he bear us past our foes.
3.The Bull with brightly-gleaming flame who utterly consumes the fiends So may he bear us past our foes.
4.Who looks on all existing things and comprehends them with his view: So may he bear us past our foes.
5.Resplendent Agni, who was born in farthest region of the air: So may he bear us past our foes.
Asked of Guide
Why is Agni called “the Bull” and asked to “bear us past our foes” repeatedly?
The hymn calls Agni “the Bull” to signal strength, virility, and dependable power; bulls in Vedic imagery are movers and protectors who lead the community forward. Each line supplies a facet of that leadership—bright flame, consuming fiends, far-seeing vision—and the refrain “So may he bear us past our foes” turns those powers into a petition for deliverance.
This is a ritual request: the poet names Agni’s qualities and then asks him to act on them, making ritual knowledge into practical protection. That pattern of descriptive praise followed by a petition appears across the Rig Veda, for example in other Agni hymns where saying what a god is becomes a way to secure the god’s intervention.
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