ṛgveda :

ṛgveda (RV) as commonly spoken of today refers to the "śākala śākhā" (शाकल शाखा) or śākala branch. In olden times there were five branches of RV viz., śākala, bāṣkala, āśvalāyana, sāṃkhyāyana (kauṣītaki) and māṇḍūkyāyana. There were no material differences between them except arrangement of riks and sūktas and some riks being omitted in one or the other branch. Most probably these differences could have arisen due to human inabilities during the millennia of oral transmission of the veda/s, and for reasons not known, the system of oral transmission in four out of the five branches disappeared almost completely; only the śākala śākhā is currently known well and has been taken as the vulgate text. We have been able to get an enormous amount of knowledge, analysis, criticism etc., based on this version, and to a less limited extent, from comparison of the five different branches.

RV - the śākala version - has 10 maṇḍalas (books) and 1017 sūktas which together contain 10472 ṛks (verses); there is also another method of looking at RV as divided into 8 aṣṭakas, 64 adhyāyas, 85 anuvākas in which the 1017 sūktas are divided. There are 1,93,816 words in the RV.

Note : There is some difference in the total number of sūktas and ṛks given by between various authorities. It is because some portions known as 'vālakhilyas or bālakhilyas ’, a collection of 11 (according to some only 6 or 8) hymns of the ṛgveda (commonly inserted after VIII - 48, but numbered separately as a supplement by some editors .

Of the ten maṇḍalas or books of RV, books 2 to 7 are called "Family Books" by scholars because the sūktas in each of these maṇḍalas are ascribed to rishis of one particular lineage, as shown below:

maṇḍala-2 gṛtsamada
maṇḍala-3 viśvāmitra
maṇḍala-4 vāmadeva
maṇḍala-5 atri
maṇḍala-6 bhāradvāja
maṇḍala-7 vasiṣṭha


Book 1 is older than Books 8, 9 and 10. These books were not composed by a distinct family of ṛṣis each, but by different individual ṛṣis. Books 1 and 8 are almost like Family Books as a majority of the hymns are composed by the family of kāṇvās and many hymns are found in both the Books. Book 9 is different from the rest and all the hymns therein are addressed to Soma (while not a single hymn is addressed to Soma in the Family Books) and by groups of ṛṣis. Book 10 is a collection of various earlier and later hymns.It appears to be of a later origin and of a supplementary character. The Books 1 and 10 are the longest Books together accounting for about 40 percent of the bulk of the Rig Veda.

Among the Namboodiris of Kerala, they used to have a system of "mudras" or signs to indicate the word endings in RV and an expert will be able to recite the rik if someone simply indicates the mudras for two or three such consecutive mudras. This used to be one method of creating expertise in the RV.

vedavyāsa is held to be the one who codified the vedas into four. In mahābhārata, śāntiparva, 359, there is a mention of another earlier Acharya by name "apāntarataman", son of vāgṛṣi, who was an epitome of virtues and a "trikālajñāni" - one who knew the past, present and the future. This apāntarataman, it is told, spread the eternal veda everywhere, and he taught it even to svāyambhuva manu. He was also known as "prācīnagarbhan".

Poetical metres or chandas in RV:

The more common poetical metres are listed below according to the number of letters (aksharas) required for each:

gāyatrī - 24
uṣṇik - 28
anuṣṭup (anuṣṭup) - 32
bṛhatī - 36
paṅkti - 40
triṣṭup- 44
jagata - 48

There are other metres equiring less than 24 akṣaras or more than 48 akṣaras. According to scholars the shortest and longest metres in vedas (all the four of them) are 'mā' chandas - 4 akṣaras and 'utkṛti' chandas - 104 akṣaras.

An important point of much interest is that the very famous "gāyatrī mantra" is not in gāyatrī chandas; it is one akshara short (only 23 aksharas) and is therefore called "nicṛd gāyatrī". (This is why in the nyāsa for gāyatrī japa we say "sāvitryā r̆śirviśvāmitraḥ, nicr̆d gāyatrī cḥandaḥ, savitā devatāḥ; the mantra is actually "sāvitri").


If two letters are short from gāyatrī metre , then the metre is known 'virāj gāyatrī'.