Upanishads · Atharvaśiras 22
॥
Devanāgarī
यो वै रुद्रः स भगवान् यश् च मृत्युस् तस्मै वै नमोनमः
Transliteration (IAST)
yo vai rudraḥ sa bhagavān yaś ca mṛtyus tasmai vai namonamaḥ
Word-by-word
SanskritIASTMeaning
यः वै रुद्रःyaḥ vai rudraḥhe who is Rudra; the one who is Rudra
सः भगवान्saḥ bhagavānhe is the Lord; he indeed is the Bhagavān
यः च मृत्युःyaḥ ca mṛtyuḥand who is death; and the one who is mṛtyu
तस्मै वै नमः नमःtasmai vai namaḥ namaḥto him be homage and homage; to him obeisance and obeisance
Translation
He who is Rudra — He is the Lord, and He is death. To Him be homage and homage.
Version
a1e329ec4aee · published Jul 29, 2026, 3:17:52 AM UTC
Available inRUENPage between verses with
Mṛtyu, death itself — not the god of death and not the judge.
This is the heaviest word that can stand in a doxology, and the book sets it down without reservations.
The Bṛhadāraṇyaka begins its account of creation just as bluntly: “nothing was here in the beginning; by death this was covered, by hunger — for hunger is death”.
There death is that with which the world begins. Here it is one of the names of Him to whom one bows.
The sense of both passages is one, and it is not grim but the reverse. So long as death remains something other than God, a man stands between two powers and does not know whose will prevail. But if death is He, the dying man does not pass from one pair of hands into another.
The fifteenth mantra of the Rāma-tāpanī's litany says exactly the same of Rāma, and the sixteenth after it names immortality.
Here the order is the same: the next section will say “and he is amṛta”.