He talks about the welfare of their child. However, Urvashi says she is bored and prefers the company of her female companions, much to Pururava’s resentment. Pururava begs his wife to stay, reminding her of their love. She wants to leave Pururava and return to Swarga to be in the company of the other apsaras. Interestingly, the only reference to Swarga in the Rig Veda is in this story. Urvashi is an apsara from Swarga who visits earth and marries a mortal, Purarava. This story, of Urvashi and Purarava, was later retold in the Sanskrit plays of Kalidas. The third story is in the final or tenth chapter of the Rig Veda. Here, we find how the idea of beauty and the desire to be sensual and fertile come to reside with the female. Apala becomes an attractive woman as Indra pulls her through the eye of the wheel of his celestial chariot. It must be noted that she first asks things for her father and then for herself, indicating her selfless nature that pleases gods.
#Read rig veda in hindi skin
She requests two things for her father, hair on his head and a fertile field, and one for herself - a beautiful body with sensuous features, free of any skin condition. The crunching sound and release of Soma juice excite Indra, who comes down to earth from heaven and offers her three boons. The story goes that she accidentally discovers the Soma plant and bites it. She has been rejected by her husband because she has a skin ailment, which is suggested as being excessive hair on the body. In chapter eight of the Rig Veda, we come across a character called Apala. This tension between the two ideas pervades Hindu thought and can be seen originating in the Rig Veda. The householder believes the only way to move forward in life is by producing children.
The hermit desires to attain immortality by restraining his senses and not shedding his semen. Here, we also find, for the first time, the reference to the great Hindu tension between the lives of the hermit and the householder. The stillness, “dheer”, of the sage is taken away by the flightier “adheer” women, suggesting women are associated with fluidity, sensuality and temptations. She plays the role of an archetypal nymph who seduces the ascetic, though in this case, she is the wife. In the story, Lopamudra encourages her husband to give up his ascetic practices and perform his husbandly duties, in order to experience the pleasure of the senses and produce a child, a necessity for the continuation of his household. The first story comes from the first chapter itself -a conversation between the sage Agastya and his wife Lopamudra. But there are also some stories about women, providing a sense of the Vedic period and attitudes towards femininity and, more importantly, sexuality. Through the hymns, we learn about the earliest storytelling tradition of India, mostly about the virile macho Indra and his victories. They exist in the margins, but we get a sense that they were being gradually mainstreamed.
But you will also find quite a few female poets ( rishikas) and female deities. The collection is dominated by hymns to gods, composed mostly by men. It is a set of over 1,000 Sanskrit hymns, organised in 10 chapters by Rishi Vyasa. In Rig Veda, we come across three women whose stories reveal a lot about the period