The Concept of Time in the Rig-Veda: The Hymns of Dīrghatamas (Updated and Revised, 02-07-14)

"Theology" in the Ṛg

The Rig-Veda-Saṁhitā, comprising a large collection or sacred hymns, or ṛc-s, (pronounced "riches") is arguably the oldest surviving religious text in the world. As such, it offers somewhat crucial insights into the ancient psyche of the Indo-Europeans who composed it, but may perhaps even tell us something about those who lived at the time it was composed (much of the text appears to aggregate the prayers, narratives, and hymns of disparate communities, perhaps even translating some of these from simpler prakṛta languages into high "Vedic Sanskrit"). For the most part, the text is a collection of ritual poems or hymns composed in honor of a number of different divinities and/or "demons" (Skt., devas₁, suras₂). Many of these divinities eventually waned in popularity, though versions of them have remained integrated, if now in a diminished capacity, in the worldviews of traditions that grew into maturity after the closing of the Ṛg and others of its kind. 

As a prime example, Indra, who is, at least in terms of the sheer abundance of hymns addressed to him, the primary divinity of the Rig (along with Agni, or Fire), declined in honors by the period of the early Upaniṣads, though he retains a sardonic role, as a warning against hubris, in both Mahāyāṇa and Purāṇic literature. Thus, he becomes something of a minimized, "domesticated" deity, not unlike a pet dog, devoided of his former, wilder character₂. Divinities and demons, in these texts, personify the many powers of nature; they are, more or less, gods of nature₃. As such, each of them is honored with a representative theology, hymns which imply their respective importance and primordiality, frequently with repeated references to their many heroic feats and powers.

The multivalent theologies of the Rig-veda have led scholars to apply variant specialized Latin-derived terms in attempts to formally characterize the theological traditions historically rooted in these texts, as 'henotheism'₄ or 'monolatry'₅, and thus bring their thought within the fold of Occidental ideas about religion and history. These terms imply in slightly different ways that each God can stand in place of the last, almost paramount to serial monogamy (could we use the term "serial monotheism"?). While I do feel it is necessary to acknowledge such theological trends are there in the text, it is also important to stress that the text is a compilation, representing the work of numerous families, communities, tribes, each of whom may or may not have been as 'polytheistic' as the text taken merely as a whole might imply. There is at least some reason to doubt that while new theological and mystical trends did grow out of this completed form, the original elements of the text represented an entirely uniform theology. The very compilation of these elements into a single work produced a striking new way of thinking about these traditions that impacted later theological developments, and did give rise to something more henotheistic. But it is also quite likely that the traditions which brought forth the various elements retained divergant values and practices in addition to those that more readily converged.

Dīrghatamas

The first maṇḍala paradoxically belongs linguistically to the latest layer of the compilation, this in part confirmed by chronologies offered in the text itself and in part by what we know of the names mentioned. The section containing hymns 140 through 164 belong to the family of a sage named Dīrgha-tamas, meaning 'the longest one' (or more strictly, the 'long-most'). The term dīrgha is also mentioned in Pāṇinian grammar as a metric used in the composition of hymns. So his name may have had grammatical connotations in his time. This connection is predicated on the possibility that Pāṇini may have picked up the term from a previously existing grammatical tradition, something I'm not able to claim with certainty. His name could just as well have meant that he was the tallest son of such and such parents, for all I know!

For the sake of this discussion, I will refer to Dīrghatamas as the author of those hymns collected for the Rig-veda by his family. This is simply heuristic, as I am unclear on whether the tradition and evidence ascribes these works to a single person of that name. Dīrghatamas is significant in several respects. For one, he is the author of one of the earliest surviving references to Viṣṇu, the primary deity of Vaiṣṇavism. For another, he is the author of the earliest surviving reference to the homology of Time as a Wheel. The fact that these coincide in one name prove definitively neither that Dīrghatamas was one of the first Vaiṣṇavas, nor that he was even predominantly of such a persuasion,₆ but it does provide an interesting lead for further research on the character of early Vaiṣṇavism. The D̄īrghatamas hymns themselves tell us something of him:

दीर्घतमा मामतेयो जुजुर्वान दशमे युगे | अपामर्थं यतीनां ब्रह्मा भवति सारथिः ||
"Dīrghatamas, son of Mine-ness (Mamatā), hath perished in the tenth age (yuga). For the sake of the waters reaching their end, Brahmā becomes their charioteer" (RV I.158.6).

It is not entirely here what exactly is meant by "He is the Brahman of the waters", as the terms 'Brahman' and 'waters' often have multiple meanings in these texts. One provisionally plausible reading is that his speech acts are fluid and adaptive, if we take 'Brahman' to mean a "powerful speech act", as the term often does in these early texts, and 'waters' to be referring to a principle attribute of such speech acts. Or else, it could mean that he is, abstractly speaking, a deity who presides over rivers and streams, if we take 'Brahman' to mean the universal divine principle, and 'waters' more literally. If the term 'Brahman' is in regard to the priestly function of silently presiding over a sacrificial rite, the phrase could be implying that he makes certain that the fluid practices of the rite achieve their ultimate aim, in the form of a boon sought by the sacrificer et al. Or, yet again, it may imply that Dīrghatamas was familiar with many of the mysterious astrological identifications covering of that portion of the ancient night sky referred to as Samudra, or the "Deluge", in astronomical jargon. If this reference is to the constellation, Cygnus (who certainly has a long "neck"!), we might take it to indicate that Dīrghatamas, as departing further and further from the polar zenith is descending below the horizon in order to lead the waters below, not unlike Bhagīratha (whose "grandson" is named Sagara, meaning "ocean")! Moreover, as is often the case, more than one of these meanings could be meant. Or else, something entirely distinct from those meanings I've been able to imagine here could have been intended. This is a common feature of these texts; they are quite intentionally very cryptic, and reflect a consciousness absorbed in modes of thinking that saw poetry and riddle as seriously as we today take scientific-technological discourse. Such abstraction of thought reflected an attitude toward refined speech that easily matches Shakespeare in its decorous and hyperbolic nature.

Chariots of Fire

The charioteer reference is particularly intriguing, as it indicates a wheeled vehicle. Dīrghatamas employs wheel analogies or metaphors several times in his writings, which might have arisen from a fascination with the human articraft of making vehicles. As technologies were both simple and sparse in those days, we do see a trend to repeatedly employ a quite small set of technological metaphors. Three particular technologies stand out as distinctly popular: thread/looms, wheels/chariots, and fire. Each of these technologies were repeatedly employed in a variety of metaphors for thinking about divinity, and were even homogenized to a good extent. Fire even becomes homologized with the Wheel in Rig-veda I.142.9: "By thee, O Agni, Varuṇa who guards the Law, Mitra and Aryaman, the Bounteous, are made strong; For, as the felly holds the spokes, thou with thy might pervading hast been born encompassing them round" [italics added].†

The verses which precede allude to a known slash/burn practices used in ancient agriculture. Fire here is thus not merely the fire of the hearth, but a an instrument of agriculture. Fire accomplishes two important products for agriculture: First, it destroys the organic life, quickly reducing it to a sort of fertilizer, and second, it clears the land, making it far less labor intensive to plow. The hymn provides a provocative imagery; the fire starts from a central point, no doubt, set by an agriculturalist, farmer (or perhaps even by a priest), and then spreads out in a ring-like fashion, forming, as the author calls it, a "felly". The felly is the inner rim of a wheel that holds the spokes in place. And this wheel-like formation strengthens the homology earthly fire has with the sun, which circles round the earth and through the zodiac, in a ring-like motion, upon, of all things, a one-wheeled chariot. Thus in the Rig-veda, fire, which is a central technology and metaphor for the divine, prefigures, in important ways, the emerging metaphysic of the wheel of Time.

The Rig-veda is composed of ten maṇḍalas, or rings, each of these composed of sub-rings, or upamaṇḍalas. The hymns associated with Dīrghatamas are said by Shrikant G. Talageri to belong to the 'general' class of hymns in Maṇḍala I, meaning that they are more difficult to pinpoint in terms of the date of their origin, as compared to the other upamaṇḍalas in the first ring. According to J. Gonda, hymn I.164 is the earliest explicit mention of time as a wheel (I've already provided reason enough to suspect in indirect reference above in the Agni hymns). There are two verses which allude to this (these references can be quite eliptical, being based in secretive homologies). Verse two states, "Seven to the one-wheeled chariot yoke the Courser; bearing seven names the single Courser draws it. Three-naved the wheel is, sound and undecaying, whereon are resting all these worlds of being," and from verse three "The seven who on the seven-wheeled car are mounted have horses, seven in tale, who draw them onward".₈

This hymn is also unique in a number of ways. It's style is much more ponderous and restrained than many of the other hymns, which tend to make less subtle homologies and requests of the devas and asuras.₁₁ Of course, some scholars might suggest that this places the hymn at a later period; but it is important to note just how developed the language is even in the earliest portions of the Rig-veda; there is reason enough to suppose that philosophy was going on (despite much of it not being recorded in text). This hymn interrogates its own astrotheology, asking rather ponderous questions about the nature of reality that one might not expect to find in a putatively dogmatic religious text of such antiquity. This hymn thus clearly demonstrates a period of significant freedom for contemplative investigation, and some rather interesting plays on language:

"Who hath beheld him as he sprang to being, seen how the boneless One supports the bony?
Where is the blood of earth, the life, the spirit? Who may approach the man who knows, to ask it?
Unripe in mind, in spirit undiscerning, I ask of these the Gods’ established places;
For up above the yearling Calf the sages, to form a web, their own seven threads have woven.
I ask, unknowing, those who know, the sages, as one all ignorant for sake of knowledge,
What was that ONE who in the Unborn's image hath stablished and fixed firm these worlds' six regions.
Let him who knoweth presently declare it, this lovely Bird's securely founded station".₉


The content of the remainder of these verses and the remainder of this hymn is so rich that it requires attention all to itself. The hymn contains 52 verses in all, making it one of the longer hymns in the Rig-veda. In it are a number of seminal elements for was to become a far more robust literary culture of Vaiṣṇavism. For now, I will return the focus to the theme of time as it appears in the text. Verse 48: "Twelve are the fellies, and the wheel is single; three are the naves. What man hath understood it? Therein are set together spokes three hundred and sixty, which in nowise can be loosened."₁₀

A question I've had for some time now has been whether the existence of this analogy about Time as a Wheel was developed separate from the Vaiṣṇava theology. What I have discovered at minimum from this verse is that the connection between the two was made very early on. But questions remain. Are we to suppose that Dīrghatamas was the author of this hymn? How does the theme of the wheel of time relate to the other verses in this hymn? Just how far are we justified in articulating the cryptic, ponderous style of the text as seminal to later Vaiṣṇava thought?

We will continue to study these questions as time opens up new sites for investigation, though this hymn is likely to occupy my thoughts and studies for a while.

For another interesting blog on the hymns of Dīrghatamas and their connection to South Asian astrology: click here.


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1. from √div*, an Indo-European primitive nominal, variously meaning (heaven/sky/day). We have a fair number of modern derivaties; cf., Zeus, Ju-piter, Day, Theo-logy, Divine.
2. Indra is a popular deity in early Mahāyāṇa Buddhist literature, though he goes by the name Śakra. In this reconfiguration, he becomes a disciple of the Buddha, and the Buddha's bodhisattva disciples.
3. Among the many devas in the Rig, there is vac (voice), indra ("cheif", usually associate with sky, rain, thunder; cf., Zeus, Thor, etc.), varuṇa (Lord of universal order, the oceanic depths, [night sky?]), agni (fire, cf., ignite), soma (moon), rohita/aditya/surya (sun), sarasvatī (ancient river that eventually dried up), arcis (dawn), vayu (wind), and so on.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolatrism
6. hymn 140 is a laudation of Agni. Still, there is even here explicit mention of cycles of time. Verse 2, for example: "Child of a double birth he grasps at triple food; in the year's course what he hath swallowed grows anew." Trans., Griffith, Ralph T.H., (1896).
†: Trans. Griffith, Ralph T.H., (1896). This passage constitutes evidence for the constellar status of the deities mentioned therein. But why these divinities in particular? I am as yet uncertain.
8. Trans. Griffith, Ralph T.H., (1896).
9. ibid.
10. ibid.
11. It may come as a surprise to my reader that the Rig-veda regards numerous popular gods as asuras (including Varuṇa, Indra, Mitra, and others).