Devalok
Legend · 2 tellings · Pan-India

Vishvavasu is asked to leave the wedding

In the wedding verses of the Rigveda and Atharvaveda the Gandharva Vishvavasu, second of the bride's three divine guardians, is praised and asked to rise and seek an unmarried girl.

Who is in it

Texts: Rigveda

The story, beat by beat

  1. The speaker tells Vishvavasu to rise because the girl now has a husband.
  2. He praises him and tells him to seek a girl still in her father's house, his share of old.
  3. He repeats the request by name.
  4. The bride is told that Soma had her first, the Gandharva next, Agni third, and a man fourth.
  5. The bridegroom says Soma gave her to the Gandharva, the Gandharva to Agni, and Agni to him.
  6. The paths are wished straight and thornless; Pushan is to take her hand.
  7. The bridegroom takes her hand for good fortune.
  8. The couple are told not to be parted and to live out their full lives.

marriage guardian farewell blessing

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Rigveda 10.85

Pan-India All traditions

Within the long wedding hymn, two verses (21-22) address Vishvavasu with praise and ask him to rise and find another maid in her father's house. Verses 40-41 tell the bride that Soma, the Gandharva and Agni were her lords before her human husband, each giving her to the next. The surrounding verses bless the road, free the bride from her father's house, and join the couple's hands.

Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 10.85.21-27; Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 10.85.36-42

Primary text (translation)

Atharvaveda 14.2 (with 4.37, 2.2)

Pan-India All traditions

The Atharvan wedding book repeats the three divine husbands, asks the Gandharvas and Apsarases who guard the wayside trees not to harm the procession, and sends Vishvavasu to the bride's unmarried sister and to his own wives the Apsarases, with homage to his eye and his fiery anger; it then declares the Gandharva banished to the farthest region. Hymn 4.37 drives Gandharvas and Apsarases away with the goat's-horn plant; 2.2 worships the Gandharva as lord of the world.

What is different here:

More wary: names his anger, the trees he haunts and where he should go, and states that he has been sent away.

Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1895) § 14.2.3-9; Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1895) § 14.2.33-36; Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1895) § 4.37; Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1895) § 2.2

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)

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