Deity

pitaraḥ

the Fathers

The ancestral dead, invoked to come to their offering and sit on the strewn grass beside the living.

Supported

ancestral

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Across the four Vedas

Where this deity is named in the text, counted per collection. Certain and probable mentions are included; ambiguous ones are held back and shown separately below.

Named in the text

Passages in which a registered form of this name occurs, counted once per passage.

Measured over Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda.

Named in the text. Passages in which a registered form of this name occurs, counted once per passage.
Rigveda		293 passages
Samaveda		3 passages
Yajurveda		37 passages
Atharvaveda		128 passages

These are Sanskrit surface matches and therefore lower bounds. Being named is not the same as the passage being about the deity.

461Certain

0Probable

0AmbiguousHeld back from every figure above. The referent could not be resolved, so counting these would overstate the deity.

Ascribed by the apparatus

The traditional hymn dedication, which is a different kind of record from being named in a verse. The two are never summed.

How the ascription was recorded

Passages carrying this deity as their dedication, split by whether the source states it verse by verse or the hymn heading was projected downward.

The ascription apparatus exists for Rigveda only. A zero elsewhere is a missing apparatus, not an absent deity.

How the ascription was recorded. Passages carrying this deity as their dedication, split by whether the source states it verse by verse or the hymn heading was projected downward.
Stated for the verse		4 passages
Inherited from the hymn		14 passages

Inherited from the hymn the hymn heading projected onto every verse inside it

Ascription is the traditional apparatus dedicating a hymn. For this deity it reaches RV, and the layer as a whole reaches RV, AV. The total spans two routes with two methods and `ascription_routes` separates them: the Rigvedic dedication is the Anukramani naming a deity the registry holds, the Atharvavedic one is that dedication recovered from a Sanskrit adjective under Panini 4.2.24 sasya devata, and 277 of the 324 Atharvavedic descriptors are refused a deity rather than resolved -- each carrying its own recorded reason. The Atharvavedic dedications counted here were derived from 39 of the 47 that resolve, because the derived layer has not been rebuilt from the 8 the R4 matcher gained (R4-RESIDUAL-ATTRIBUTION-002). A zero in a corpus the layer reaches is an absent dedication; a zero in the Samaveda or Yajurveda is a missing apparatus rather than an absent deity. Most ascriptions are a hymn label projected onto each verse inside it rather than a per-verse statement.

What this deity does

Actions where the deity stands as the grammatical agent. Read from the Rigvedic morphological annotation only.

Is or becomes
Blesses
Creates
Moves to
Establishes
Builds
Carries
Invokes
Leads
Strengthens

What it is asked to do

Actions in the imperative or optative: what the poets request, as distinct from what is asserted.

Grants
Moves to

Associated ideas

Registered concepts named in the same passages.

ancestors (pitaraḥ)
body (tanū)
sacrifice (yajña)
wealth (rayi)
chant (sāman)
heaven (dyaus)
house (gṛha)
oblation (havis)
path (adhvan)
sin (enas)

Objects and substances

ancestors (pitaraḥ)
heaven (dyaus)
fire (agni)
wealth (rayi)
sacrifice (yajña)
earth (pṛthivī)
oblation (havis)
cosmic order (ṛta)
friendship (sakhya)
body (tanū)

Seers of its hymns

Ranked over the ascription apparatus, most of which is inherited from the hymn heading.

yāmāyanaḥ śaṅkhaḥ
vaivasvato yamaḥ

Metres

triṣṭup
jagatī

Named alongside

Deities that share passages with this one. Co-mention is proximity in a verse, not a relationship the text asserts.

Agni Yama Indra Soma Prthivi Heaven and Earth the Rbhus the Asvins Rudra Usas

Formula families

Shared wording that recurs in passages naming this deity.

pūrve pitaraḥ11 mantras naming this deity

naḥ pūrve pitaraḥ9 mantras naming this deity

pitaraḥ somyāso9 mantras naming this deity

pitaraḥ somyāsaḥ7 mantras naming this deity

pitror upasthe7 mantras naming this deity

pitr̥bhiḥ saṃvidāna7 mantras naming this deity

pitaro haveṣu6 mantras naming this deity

pitaraḥ padajñā5 mantras naming this deity

Passages to read

Verses that name this deity, and verses the apparatus dedicates to it. These are different claims and are listed separately.

Named in the verse

Dedicated by the apparatus

Atlas coordinates

Structure: group
Resolved as a deity: Yes
Named in: Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda
Ascription apparatus: Rigveda

Registered forms

The Sanskrit surfaces the matcher accepts for this name.

pitaraḥ

Search this nameEvery entity and text match, including look-alikes

How this profile was built8

The Anukramani names a 'devata' for every hymn, and 57 of the 214 are not gods: 22 human patrons and seers (Vasistha, Visvamitra, Brbu the carpenter), 7 danastuti labels naming the gift rather than a recipient ('praise of the gift of Sudas son of Pijavana'), and 28 abstractions ruled not to name an addressee, each with its reason recorded. This response excludes all 57 and KEEPS the 5 labels ruled UNDECIDED (Atma, Annam, Brahma, Rati, Saci), because an undecided label removed is a decision made by default. Ask with population=all_ascriptions to see the Anukramani's slot as it stands, with each row's ruling stated.
deity_population_contract
SAMAVEDA SCOPE: the Kauthuma Samaveda is present as the arcika (verse) collection only -- 1,844 mantras -- and the gana song corpus is not included. It carries no Anukramani seer or metre apparatus and no English translation, and its share of the deity mention layer comes from surface and sandhi matching rather than from the manual morphological annotation the Rigveda has. Compare it as a share of its 1,844 mantras, never as a raw total against the Rigveda's 10,552.
measured
Deity counts here include DEITY_CERTAIN + DEITY_PROBABLE. The product default is DEITY_CERTAIN + DEITY_PROBABLE, measured at 0.9742 precision against the gold sample versus 0.6142 for what DEITY_AMBIGUOUS holds; all three tiers are reported regardless, because a deity whose name is an ordinary noun is flattered or penalised by that choice.
measured
ATTRIBUTION IS NOT MENTION. The `attributed_*` figures come from the two resolved dedication predicates and from no other: HAS_DEVATA, the Anukramani's own hymn-level dedication, 10,558 edges every one Rigvedic and 8,329 of them a sukta's label projected onto each of its mantras rather than a statement about the verse; and HAS_DEVATA_DERIVED, 882 Atharvavedic dedications over 851 passages reaching 35 deities, recovered from the Anukramani's Sanskrit adjective by its own morphology under Panini 4.2.24 sasya devata. The dedication there is the source's and the resolution is this project's. Two figures, deliberately apart: 47 of the Atharvaveda's 324 descriptors RESOLVE to a deity, and the 882 dedications above were derived from 39 of them -- R4 widened the resolver and the derived layer has not been rebuilt from the 8 it gained (R4-RESIDUAL-ATTRIBUTION-002), so a descriptor can be resolved and still contribute no dedication here. The other 277 are refused with a typed reason each, so an Atharvavedic zero here may be a refused descriptor, a resolved-but-unpropagated one, or no dedication at all. A Samavedic or Yajurvedic zero means those corpora carry no Anukramani apparatus of any kind, NOT that the deity is absent from them -- for that read `mentions_by_veda`, which spans all four.
measured
THREE DEITY-ATTRIBUTION PREDICATES, NONE COMPLETE. HAS_DEVATA resolves a dedication to a :Devata node and is Rigveda-only: 10,558 edges, every one on the RV. The Atharvaveda carries its dedication under HAS_DEVATA_ASCRIPTION, 5,385 edges over 4,665 of its 6,590 PASSAGES -- 4,816 of those edges on 4,160 of its 5,839 mantras, the rest on hymn-level containers -- pointing at a :DevataAscription that holds Whitney's verbatim descriptor rather than a deity name. Those two share no label value, by category rather than by coverage. The bridge between them is now BUILT and is partial: HAS_DEVATA_DERIVED carries 882 Atharvavedic dedications over 851 passages, resolved from the descriptor's own morphology under Panini 4.2.24 sasya devata, derived from 39 of them and reaching 35 deities. 47 of the 324 descriptors now RESOLVE -- R4 widened the resolver and the derived layer has not been rebuilt from the 8 it gained (R4-RESIDUAL-ATTRIBUTION-002) -- so resolution and dedication are two figures here and not one. The other 277 are refused rather than unprocessed, each carrying a typed reason: 202 reach no canonical deity surface, 67 are compounds naming two ascriptions, 4 are hymn subjects rather than deities, 3 name a plurality, and 1 is the Anukramani's own deferral marker lingokta. So a zero here means this predicate does not reach that corpus, NOT that the corpus records no dedication and NOT that the deity is absent from it. The Samaveda and Yajurveda carry no dedication layer of any of the three kinds, which is GAP-ATTRIBUTION-001 and a source block, not an unbuilt projection. MENTIONS_DEVATA answers 'is this deity named here?' across all four (17,165 edges: RV 10,284, AV 3,582, YV 1,964, SV 1,335). Counts include CONTAINER_INHERITED attributions: a sukta's label projected onto each of its mantras. See the *_strict variant for source-stated attribution only.
deity_profile
The interpretive-claim layer holds 6 claims for the whole corpus and one of them concerns a deity, so an empty `interpretive_claims` is an unbuilt layer rather than an undisputed deity.
measured