Devalok
Legend · 3 tellings · Pan-India

The Devi Sukta: Vac describes herself

Who is in it

  • Vac the speaker of the hymn
  • Brihaspati addressed in Rigveda 10.71

Texts: Rigveda

The story, beat by beat

  1. A voice says that she walks with the Rudras, Vasus, Adityas and all the gods.
  2. She holds up Mitra and Varuna, Indra and Agni, the Ashvins, Soma, Tvashtri, Pushan and Bhaga.
  3. She calls herself the Queen, set down by the gods in many homes.
  4. All who eat, see, breathe and hear do so through her, though they do not know it.
  5. She makes mighty and wise the man she loves.
  6. She bends Rudra's bow and stirs battle for the people.
  7. She brings forth the Father on the world's summit; her home is in the waters.
  8. She blows like the wind and reaches beyond heaven and earth.

hymn speech queen poets

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Rigveda 10.125 (Devi Sukta)

Pan-India All traditions

Eight verses in the first person. The speaker travels with all the classes of gods and holds up the chief ones; she is Queen and gatherer of treasures; through her everyone eats, sees, breathes and hears without knowing it; she makes the one she loves a seer; she bends Rudra's bow, brings forth the Father, dwells in the waters and extends beyond earth and sky.

Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 10.125

Primary text (translation)

Rigveda 10.71, 8.100.10-11 and 1.164.45

Pan-India All traditions

Poets speak about Vac. The first seers, naming things, sent out her earliest utterances; they tracked her by sacrifice and found her in the seers; one man sees and hears her not, to another she shows herself as a well-dressed wife to her husband. When Vac, queen of the gods, sat down speaking words not understood, the four quarters milked out food; the gods made her and every animal speaks her. Speech has four parts; three are hidden and people speak the fourth.

What is different here:

Vac seen from outside, as something found, selective and three-quarters hidden; not self-praise.

Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 10.71; Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 8.89.10-11; Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 1.164.45

Primary text (translation)

Atharvaveda 4.30 and later use

Pan-India Shakta

The same hymn stands in the Atharvaveda with small differences. Today it is chanted in the worship of the Goddess and at the end of the Devi Mahatmya.

What is different here:

The same words, read as the voice of the supreme Goddess.

Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1895) § 4.30; Vac and Devisukta (Wikipedia)

Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1895); Vac and Devisukta (Wikipedia)

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