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Dhammapada · narration sample

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Rig Veda · 584 of 1027

Mandala 7: HYMN LXVIII. Aśvins.

1.COME, radiant Aśvins, with your noble horses: accept your servant’s hymns, ye Wonder-Workers: Enjoy oblations which we bring to greet you.

2.The gladdening juices stand prepared before you: come quickly and partake of mine oblation. Pass by the calling of our foe and bear us.

3.Your chariot with a hundred aids, O Aśvins, beareth you swift as thought across the regions, Speeding to us, O ye whose wealth is Sūrya.

4.What time this stone of yours, the Gods’ adorer, upraised, sounds forth for you as Soma-presser, Let the priest bring you, Fair Ones, through oblations.

5.The nourishment ye have is, truly, wondrous: ye gave thereof a quickening store to Atri, Who being dear to you, receives your favour.

6.That gift, which all may gain, ye gave Cyavāna, when he grew old, who offered you oblations, When ye bestowed on him enduring beauty.

7.What time his wicked friends abandoned Bhujyu, O Aśvins, in the middle of the ocean, Your horse delivered him, your faithful servant.

8.Ye lent your aid to Vrka when exhausted, and listened when invoked to Śayu’s calling. Ye made the cow pour forth her milk like water, and, Aśvins, strengthened with your strength the barren.

9.With his fair hymns this singer, too, extols you, waking with glad thoughts at the break of morning. May the cow nourish him with milk to feed llim. Preserve us evermore, ye Gods, with blessings.

Asked of Guide

Why do the Aśvins repeatedly rescue and restore people in this hymn?

The hymn presents the Aśvins as skilled, immediate helpers who bring life, beauty, and motion: they “gave…a quickening store to Atri,” restored Cyavāna’s youth, rescued Bhujyu at sea, and made the cow “pour forth her milk like water.” The poet lists concrete rescues to show the Aśvins’ role as liminal physicians and saviors who reverse decline and danger through their chariot, horses, and rites.

This hymn treats those gifts as reciprocated by ritual: the Aśvins arrive when called and partake in oblations, so the poet asks them to “accept your servant’s hymns” and to “preserve us evermore.” The dynamic resembles the Aśvins’ portrayal in other Vedic hymns where divine aid is both earned by worship and demonstrated by miraculous restoration.

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