Om Bhadram Karnebhih

What the Om Bhadram Karnebhih is

Om Bhadram Karnebhih is the peace invocation that opens the Mundaka, Prashna and Mandukya Upanishads, the three principal Upanishads of the Atharvaveda. Its two verses are far older than those Upanishads: both come from hymn 89 of the first book of the Rigveda, a hymn of the seer Gotama Rahugana to the Vishvedevas, the gods taken together. The first verse is Rigveda 1.89.8 and the second, beginning svasti na indro, is 1.89.6, so the chant takes verse 8 first and then steps back to verse 6. The first verse is a request for the senses and the body: that the ears hear only what is auspicious, that the eyes see it, and that with steady limbs the speakers may praise the gods through the whole span of life the gods have set. The second calls on four deities in turn for svasti, well-being: Indra of wide fame, Pushan who knows all, Tarkshya of the unharmed wheel-rim, and Brihaspati. The threefold Om shantih closes it. The text is printed here without Vedic accent marks; chanting with the svaras is learned from a teacher.

From a Rigveda hymn to the pupil's doorway

In the Rigveda the two verses sit inside a ten-verse hymn whose first line asks that auspicious intentions come to the singers from every side. The old metre lists give most of the hymn in jagati, mark verse 6 as virat-sthana and set verses 8 to 10 in trishtubh. The verse after bhadram karnebhih explains its phrase about the god-given span of life: a hundred autumns lie before us, O gods, it says, and it asks that the singers not be cut off midway, while sons in their turn become fathers. The medieval commentator Sayana records ritual uses for verse 8, among them its recitation in the Saumya charu offering when the performer cannot see their reflection in the ghee. The Atharvaveda teachers lifted the pair out of the sacrifice and set it at the doorway of study. The Prashna Upanishad then opens on six seekers, among them Sukesha Bharadvaja and Satyakama Shaibya, who come to the sage Pippalada with fuel in their hands, the sign of pupils asking to be taught. Pippalada sends them to live one more year in austerity, chastity and faith before they may question him. A prayer for ears that hear only what is good fits that setting, where everything is received by listening to the teacher. The Mundaka opens in the same spirit, with the householder Shaunaka approaching the sage Angiras.

The mantra, in six scripts

Om Bhadram Karnebhih lyrics in full

Rigveda 1.89.8 and 1.89.6, in the order they are chanted before the Mundaka, Prashna and Mandukya Upanishads, closed by Om shantih shantih shantih.

All 3 verses, in Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and English, each with its meaning. Choose a script:

The syllable people get wrong

Inside the long word sthirairaṅgaistuṣṭuvāṃsastanūbhir sits tuṣṭuvāṃsas, 'praising', which has two retroflex sounds, ṣ and ṭ, made with the tongue curled back; many readers flatten it to a dental 'tustuvamsas'. Say tush-tu-VAAM-sas, keeping the ṣṭ cluster together.

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