Rudra Gayatri Mantra
ॐ तत्पुरुषाय विद्महे महादेवाय धीमहि। तन्नो रुद्रः प्रचोदयात्॥In Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and English — with the meaning of every word, and the one syllable most people pronounce wrongly.
What the Rudra Gayatri is
Rudra in the Gayatri metre is the fierce, howling aspect of the Vedic storm god who later merges with Shiva. The Rudra Gayatri does not address the pacific householder Shiva of the Puranas but the wild archer of the Yajurveda whose arrows bring both fever and healing. Tradition places this Gayatri among the secondary Gayatris that adapt the classic Savitri formula to a particular deity. Here the deity is named twice: first as Tatpurusha, the cosmic person of the Taittiriya Aranyaka, and then explicitly as Rudra. The mantra therefore stands at the junction where the abstract Purusha of the sacrificial texts meets the concrete, dread-inspiring Rudra of the forest and the mountain.
Rudra’s Arrows and the Hymn
The Shatarudriya section of the Taittiriya Samhita (4.5) and the parallel passage in the Vajasaneyi Samhita present Rudra as the archer whose thousand eyes and hundred quivers command the directions. After the gods have offended him, they propitiate him with the long litany that begins namas te rudra manyave. Within that same sacrificial milieu the Rudra Gayatri arises as a compact contemplative formula. The Taittiriya Aranyaka and the Maitrayani Samhita already know the pattern ‘we know X, we meditate on Y, may Z inspire us.’ When that pattern is filled with the names Tatpurusha, Mahadeva and Rudra, the resulting Gayatri inherits the atmosphere of the Shatarudriya: the deity is still the one who must be appeased, yet he is now also the inner awakener who ‘impels’ the mind. Thus the mantra carries forward the Vedic tension between terror and grace without resolving it into later bhakti sentiment.
The mantra, in six scripts
- ॐ
- oṃ — the sacred syllable
- तत्पुरुषाय
- tatpuruṣāya — to that Supreme Person
- विद्महे
- vidmahe — we know / we discern
- महादेवाय
- mahādevāya — on the Great God
- धीमहि
- dhīmahi — we meditate
- तत्
- tat — that
- नः
- naḥ — our / for us
- रुद्रः
- rudraḥ — Rudra
- प्रचोदयात्
- pracodayāt — may he impel / inspire
The syllable people get wrong
In pracodayāt the d is dental, made with the tongue against the upper teeth, and the final ā is long. Speakers often shorten the closing vowel, yielding pracodayat, or curl the tongue back into a retroflex ḍ. The correct articulation keeps the d dental and the ā long, the shape fixed by the Yajurvedic pada-patha.
When the Rudra Gayatri is chanted
Weekday. Monday
Questions
Have your chart read before you decide
Chanting is yours to do, and free. But which deity your situation calls for — and whether a mantra alone is the right response — depends on your chart. Sometimes it is; sometimes it is not.
- Over 30 years in the Guru–Sishya Parampara, from the age of five
- He reads every chart himself — 60 minutes, one to one, never delegated
- Charts are read only between sunrise and sunset, following tradition
Related
Chanting is yours to do. Some things are performed for you.
Where a matter carries real weight, devotees sponsor the homa alongside their own practice. Performed for you and any family members you name, at our Yagna Ashram, in your name and gotra, on a muhurta calculated from your chart, and telecast live so you can watch it done for you.