Deities
Named, and dedicated to
Which deities shape each Veda, and are they the deities the hymns are given to?
A verse that says the name of a god and a hymn that the tradition assigns to a god are two different records. This product keeps them apart everywhere, and this is the plate where the reason becomes visible: one of them spans all four collections and the other exists for one.
Named in a verse, and dedicated to by its hymn
The 12 most-named deities in the corpus, in two columns. The left column counts verses that name the deity, across all four collections. The right counts verses carrying the traditional ascription of their hymn to that deity, which exists for RV, AV. Both columns count verses and share one scale, so a shorter bar is a smaller count; what they do not share is scope, and they are never added.
Named
Verses in which the deity is named. Reaches all four collections, at the CERTAIN and PROBABLE tiers.
| Deity | Bar | Verses |
|---|---|---|
| Indra | 3,566 | |
| Agni | 1,708 | |
| Soma | 421 | |
| the Waters | 43 | |
| Surya | 135 | |
| the Asvins | 434 | |
| Varuna | 589 | |
| the Maruts | 560 | |
| the Fathers | 461 | |
| Mitra | 86 | |
| Savitr | 112 | |
| Usas | 142 |
Dedicated to
Verses whose hymn the traditional index assigns to the deity. Reaches RV, AV only. A blank here is a missing index, not an absent god.
| Deity | Bar | Verses |
|---|---|---|
| Indra | 2,945 | |
| Agni | 2,164 | |
| Soma | 134 | |
| the Waters | 60 | |
| Surya | 76 | |
| the Asvins | 678 | |
| Varuna | 149 | |
| the Maruts | 431 | |
| the Fathers | 18 | |
| Mitra | 10 | |
| Savitr | 96 | |
| Usas | 193 |
Ascription is the traditional apparatus dedicating a hymn. For this deity it reaches RV, AV, 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.
Naming rates, collection by collection
The same deities as rates rather than totals: verses naming each one per 1,000 verses of the collection they are counted in. This is the only form in which the four collections are comparable, because they differ in size by nearly six to one.
Indra
3,566 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 218.4 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 219.6 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 111.9 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 108.8 per 1,000 |
Agni
1,708 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 128.8 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 44.5 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 49.1 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 29.1 per 1,000 |
Soma
421 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 24.8 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 52.6 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 18.2 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 4.45 per 1,000 |
the Waters
43 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 4.08 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | not named | |
| YVYajurveda | not named | |
| AVAtharvaveda | not named |
Surya
135 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 4.64 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 7.59 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 10.6 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 8.73 per 1,000 |
the Asvins
434 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 34.7 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 2.71 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 6.08 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 8.73 per 1,000 |
Varuna
589 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 37.1 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 19.0 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 27.3 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 18.5 per 1,000 |
the Maruts
560 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 38.0 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 15.2 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 27.3 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 13.2 per 1,000 |
the Fathers
461 verses name this deity in the corpus.
| RVRigveda | 27.8 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 1.63 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 18.7 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 21.9 per 1,000 |
The mention layer is not one instrument. The Rigvedic figures come from a manual scholarly lemma annotation; the other three collections are matched on surface tokens and sandhi, with no morphology behind them. A Rigvedic rate and an Atharvavedic rate are therefore measured differently, and a small difference between them should not be read as a difference in the texts.
What the figures show
Indra is named in 3,566 verses across the four collections and carries 2,945 in the traditional ascription, which exists for RV, AV alone. The collections do not agree on the order: ranking these deities by their rate in the Atharvaveda gives a different sequence from ranking them by their rate in the Rigveda, so a deity common in one is not automatically common in the other.
One way to read it
Where a deity is named far more often than it is dedicated to, one reading is that the name had become part of the poetic vocabulary rather than the subject of the hymn. The opposite case is the more interesting one: a deity whose hymns are dedicated to it and whose name the verses rarely say. Neither reading can be settled from these counts, because the two columns do not cover the same collections.
How to read this plate
- What is measured
- Two counts per deity. Naming: verses in which the deity is named, at the CERTAIN and PROBABLE certainty tiers. Dedication: verses carrying the traditional hymn ascription to that deity.
- What one mark is
- In the two-column figure, one bar is one deity's count of verses; both columns count verses and share one scale, so a shorter bar is a smaller count. In the rate figure, one bar is that deity's naming rate in one collection, per 1,000 verses of that collection.
- What is in scope
- Naming covers all four collections. Dedication covers the Rigveda.
- What is excluded
- AMBIGUOUS mentions, which are held back from the default figures because Vedic Sanskrit uses one word for the god Agni and for fire. They can be added, loudly, from the control above the table.
- What this does not show
- That naming and dedication measure the same thing, or that the gap between them is a correction. They have different scopes and a deity can be named often and dedicated to rarely, or the reverse.
Reads Deity registry, mention layer at CERTAIN and PROBABLE, Anukramani ascription apparatus