The Verse of Savitr

The third book of the Rigveda belongs to one family of poets. Tradition names their ancestor Vishvamitra and says the hymns in it are his and his sons'. The last hymn of the book is a short one, eighteen verses long, and nothing in it suggests that one of those verses would be repeated every morning and evening down the centuries.

It begins with a complaint.

"You used to be quick to help," the poet says to Indra and Varuna. "You needed no urging from your servant. Where is that glory now, the glory with which you held up those who loved you?"

He is not angry. He is a hard-working man who wants a good living, and he says so plainly. "This man, seeking wealth, calls on you without rest. Hear my call." He asks for treasure, and for a house full of strong sons.

Then the hymn changes its step. The long lines stop and short ones begin, three lines to a verse and eight syllables to a line. The poet goes round the gods one at a time and gives each of them three verses, the way a host goes round his guests.

Brihaspati, the lord of prayer, comes first. "Be pleased with our offerings. Give wealth to the one who brings you gifts."

Pushan is next, the god of the roads. "This is our newest song, Pushan, and it is sung for you. Take it kindly, as a bridegroom takes his bride. You see every living thing at one glance. Be our help."

Then the poet turns to Savitr. Savitr is the god who sets things moving. He rouses the world in the morning and sends it to rest at night. The poet has three verses for him as well, and this is the first.

"May we take hold of that lovely brightness of the god Savitr, and may he set our thoughts moving."

That is the whole of it. The poet does not ask for cattle in this verse, or for sons, or for the defeat of an enemy. He asks for the god's light, and for his own mind to be stirred.

The next two verses come back to earth. "With understanding we beg Savitr for our share of good fortune." And then, "Men who sing, moved by their own thoughts, worship Savitr with hymns and with the rite."

The poet does not linger. Soma gets his three verses, with a prayer for wholesome food for people and for cattle, "for the two-footed and the four-footed." Mitra and Varuna get the last three, and are asked to wet the pastures with butter. The hymn closes by naming a singer, Jamadagni, whose song has praised them.

So the verse sits in its hymn, tenth out of eighteen, between a verse to Pushan and a request for prosperity. Nobody in the hymn says that it is different from the others.

It is called the Savitri, because it belongs to Savitr. It is also called the Gayatri, which is simply the name of its metre, three lines of eight syllables. Many verses of the Rigveda are in that metre. When people say "the Gayatri", they mean this one.

The Brahmanas are the prose books that came after the hymns, and they show the verse at work. By their time it had a fixed place. It was the first thing a student was taught.

A boy comes to a teacher and says, "I have come to be a student."

"What is your name?" the teacher asks, and takes the boy's right hand. Then he gives the boy away, one protector at a time. "To Prajapati I hand you over. To the god Savitr I hand you over. To the waters and the plants, to heaven and earth, to all beings, so that no harm comes to you."

The orders follow. "You are a student now. Sip water. Do your work. Put fuel on the fire. Do not sleep."

After that comes the verse. In earlier days, the Shatapatha Brahmana says, teachers made the boy wait a year for it. A child is a year in the making before it is born, they reasoned, and the student was being born a second time. Others waited six months, or twenty-four days, or twelve, or six, or three. The book's own advice is to teach a brahmin boy at once.

The teacher faces east and the boy sits looking at him. The teacher says the verse one line at a time, then by halves, then whole. With each round, the book says, breath is being laid into the boy.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad adds a small story about what it means to know the verse.

King Janaka of Videha was riding on an elephant. The elephant had once been a man named Budila, who used to speak as one who knew the Gayatri.

"You talked as though you knew the Gayatri," said the king. "How is it that you have become an elephant, and carry me?"

"Your Majesty," said Budila, "I did not know its mouth."

Its mouth is fire, the Upanishad explains. Pile as much wood as you like on a fire and it burns all of it. A man who knows this may have done much wrong, and the verse burns all of that too, and he comes out clean.

The same passage counts the verse's feet. It has three, which are the three worlds, the three Vedas and the three breaths. It has a fourth as well, a bright one that shines above the sky. No teacher's fee could ever pay for that one, the book says, even if the fee were everything that breathes.