The word Ṛgveda comes from Ṛc (ऋच्) meaning “to praise” and Veda (वेद) meaning “knowledge”. It is the oldest known saṃskṛta text. The central part of Ṛgveda hymns primarily aims to praise the god(s) to whom the hymn is devoted and to induce said god(s) to repay the praise with requested favours
Each Veda is divided into 4 parts. the Saṃhitā (put together/union), the Brāhmaṇa, the Āraṇyaka (belonging to the wilderness)and the Upaniṣad (upa “by” and ni-ṣad “sit down, refers to the student sitting down near the teacher). The Saṃhitās are a collection of hymns, the Brāhmaṇas are works attached to the Saṃhitās related to the instructions for Vedic rituals. The Āraṇyakas continue visions of the relationship between sacrifice, the universe, and humanity and the Upaniṣads deal with ontology and metaphysics.
The narrative consists of 1028 hymns divided into ten books or maṇḍalas (“circles”), of variable lengths. The layout of the hymns within each maṇḍala and the layout of the maṇḍalas themselves attest strongly to the intended quality of the collection and organization of the hymns. Maṇḍalas 2–7 are known as the “Family Books,” each attributed to a distinct bardic family. Maṇḍala 8 contains smaller collections attributed to particular poets or poetic families and has a fairly deviant character. Maṇḍala 9 contains all and only the hymns dedicated to Soma Pavamāna, “self-purifying soma” the deified ritual drink at a precise instant in its ritual preparation. Maṇḍalas 1 and 10 were added to the collection later, though they both contain much that is contemporaneous with the linguistic and religious level of the core parts of the Ṛgveda, as well as some more contemporary and “popular” material. Both 1 and 10 contain exactly 191 hymns, synchronicity that was not by chance.
The Ṛgveda constitutes 1028 sūktas or hymns, which have a total of slightly more than 10,500 verses and which are split into tenmaṇḍalas, or books, of uneven size. Within each maṇḍala, there is a further division of the hymns into anuvākas or “recitations” embracing several hymns. The number of hymns in an anuvāka ranges within a maṇḍala, and the number of anuvākas in each maṇḍala varies from maṇḍala to maṇḍala. As its name suggests, the anuvāka division was created primarily to provide convenient units for memorization and recitation. There is a second division of the Ṛgveda oeuvre into eight aṣṭakas, but this is a purely mechanical setup also created to ease memorization. In this latter division, each of the eight aṣṭakas encloses eight adhyāyas, each adhyāya includes thirty-three Vargas, and each Varga includes five verses.
The core of the Ṛgveda and its oldest part is the “Family Books,” so-called because the hymns in each maṇḍala are attributed to muses belonging to the same family lineage. These comprise Maṇḍalas 2–7.
The family lineages are the following:
Gṛtsamada
Viśvāmitra
Vāmadeva
Atri
Bharadvāja
Vasiṣṭha
Within the Ṛgvedic corpus, the six Family Books are typically ordered according to the increasing number of hymns in each subsequent maṇḍala. So Maṇḍala 2 contains the least number of hymns and 7 the most.
Within each” Family Book” the hymns are ordered first by the deity. therefore the hymns to Agni come first, followed by those to Indra. After these collections are the hymns to other divinities, generally arranged by the dwindling number of hymns to each deity within the maṇḍala. Within each deity collection, the hymns are organised by their length, starting with the longest hymns. However, they’re ordered according to cadence, with the hymns in longer measures placed before those in shorter measures, If two hymns are of equal length. While this is the general corps of the text, there are many anomalies to these arrangement principles.
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