Night comes looking out with all her eyes, in all her glories. Immortal, she fills the waste, height and depth, and conquers darkness with light; she sets Dawn her sister in her place. The poet asks her favour: people have come to her as birds to their nest; villagers and all that walks and flies have gone to rest, even the falcons. Keep off the she-wolf, the wolf and the thief; be easy to pass. She has come close, decking the dark; Dawn is asked to cancel it like debts. He offers the hymn like cattle to the child of Heaven.
Four protective hymns. Night's far edge is unseen and all that stirs rests in her; may we reach her further side unharmed. Her watchers over men are counted by elevens from ninety-nine down to eleven. No thief, wolf, robber or sorceress is to prevail; the snake is to be blinded, the wolf's jaws ground, the thief snared. Belongings in the chest are committed to her. Night, called mother, is to hand the sleepers to Dawn, Dawn to Day, Day back to Night. The speaker knows her name, ghee-dripping, as Bharadvaja knew it, and asks to cross night after night as men cross deep water.
What is different here:
A householder's prayer more than a picture: counted watchers, snake, the chest, the relay to Dawn and Day.
Later use: the Ratri Sukta beside the Devi Mahatmya
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The Rigveda hymn, with an appendix (khila) of further verses, is recited as the Ratri Sukta in the ceremonial recitation of the Chandi. The Devi Mahatmya's own hymn by Brahma calls the Goddess the Night of the world's destruction, the Great Night and the Night of delusion.
What is different here:
Liturgical afterlife; the gentle Vedic Night is read as a form of the great Goddess.
Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; Atharva-Veda Samhita, tr. W. D. Whitney, rev. C. R. Lanman (Harvard Oriental Series 7-8, 1905), Book XIX hymns 47-50; Ratrisukta (Hindupedia, after Swami Harshananda, A Concise Encyclopaedia of Hinduism); The Markandeya Purana, tr. F. E. Pargiter (Bibliotheca Indica, 1904)