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VedAnvaya
Deity atlas

Deity

tvaṣṭā

Tvastr

The divine craftsman who fashions forms and shapes the vajra for Indra, and who is invoked for the granting of offspring.

Supported
artisan

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.
Rigveda65 passages
Samaveda5 passages
Yajurveda32 passages
Atharvaveda36 passages

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

138Certain
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 verse13 passages
Inherited from the hymn
Status not supplied
not established
  • 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.

  • Builds
  • Establishes
  • Creates
  • Strengthens
  • Binds
  • Perceives
  • Desires
  • Hears
  • Leads
  • Praises

What it is asked to do

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

  • Binds
  • Moves to

Associated ideas

Registered concepts named in the same passages.

  • hero (vīra)
  • sacrifice (yajña)
  • lifespan (āyus)
  • livestock (paśu)
  • offspring (prajā)
  • sacred grass (barhis)
  • soma juice (soma)

Objects and substances

  • soma juice (soma)
  • thunderbolt (vajra)
  • birth (janman)
  • fire (agni)
  • house (gṛha)
  • mind (manas)
  • offspring (prajā)
  • wind (vāta)
  • body (tanū)
  • earth (pṛthivī)

Seers of its hymns

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

  • kāṇvo medhātithiḥ
  • śaunako gṛtsamadaḥ
  • aucathyo dīrghatamāḥ
  • bhārgavo jamadagniḥ
  • gāthino viśvāmitraḥ
  • kāśyapo asitaḥ
  • maitrāvaruṇiragastyaḥ
  • maitrāvaruṇirvasiṣṭhaḥ
  • vādhryaśvaḥ sumitraḥ
  • yāmāyanaḥ saṁkusukaḥ

Metres

  • triṣṭup
  • gāyatrī
  • anuṣṭup
  • jagatī
  • paṅktiḥ

Named alongside

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

Formula families

Shared wording that recurs in passages naming this deity.

tan nas turīpam5 mantras naming this deity
devebhir janibhiḥ4 mantras naming this deity
tvaṣṭā savitā4 mantras naming this deity
śivena tvaṣṭā4 mantras naming this deity
saṃ varcasā payasā saṃ tanūbhir aganmahi manasā4 mantras naming this deity
tvaṣṭā sudatro vi dadhātu4 mantras naming this deity
atrāha gor amanvata nāma tvaṣṭur4 mantras naming this deity
itthā candramaso gṛhe4 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.