On the mrityunjaya mantra

Aum Tryambakam Yajamahe

Sugandhim Pushti-vardhanam |

Urva - rukamiva Bandhanan

Mrtyor - muksheeya Maamritat ||

The famous Maha mrityunjaya mantra from the 12th verse 59th chapter of the 7th Mandala of the Rig Veda Samhita. Ascribed to Vashishta, who is supposed to have written most of the most ancient parts of the Rig Veda Samhita, this mantra is probably the 2nd most famous mantra after the Gayatri Mantra.

It actually came into my head when I was reading up on the Kundru – a plant belonging to the Cucumber family which my son found growing wild in our garden hedge, yesterday. An internet search showed that this is a very tenacious plant, very difficult to eradicate. In parts of Hawaii it has become a pest. Apparently, if you cut it away, small bits of it left behind in the soil take root and re-grow into not one but many new plants. So it is like an immortal plant. The only way to control it is to let the plant live on for ever, but pluck its fruit so that the seeds do not disperse and propagate the plant.

Strange indeed.

Coming back to the mantra, the words mean:
Aum= This is actually not there in the original mantra
Triambhaka = three eyed.
Yajamahe= we worship
Sugandhim= fragrance
Pushti =prosperous,thriving, nourish
Vardhanam=enhance
Uruvarukam=cucumber (also uruva=big, rukam= disease)
Iva=like
Bandhanan=from binding, captivity (from stem)
Mryutyor= from death
Mukshiya=liberate
Maa=not
Amritaat= nectar of immortality

An internet search reveals these two usual meanings:

1. (Sayana’s interpretation): We hail the fragrant Three-eyed One who nourishes [all] and increases the [sweet] fullness of life. As the cucumber is liberated from captivity [from its stem], may we [also] be liberated (mukshiya) from death (mrityor) not for the sake of immortality (maamritaat).

2. (Usual sense): We worship The Three-Eyed Lord Shiva who is naturally fragrant, immensely merciful and who is the Protector of the devotees. Worshipping him may we be liberated from death from our dreaded disease and may we attain the nectar of immortality


3. An alternative explanation occurs to me – is the sage trying to say the following?

Oh Triambaka, we worship you, your fragrance enhances our nourishment. Like the tenacious “Kundru” plant which is difficult to uproot, deliver us from death and grant the nectar of immortality.

Much less obscure and a simple straitforward prayer, like the rest of the prayers Vashishta has written. (Perhaps Vashishta had observed the nature of the plant!)

Regardless of its meaning, this mantra is chanted by millions to deliver them from death and disease. Markandeya, the boy who worships Shiva in the Markandeya puranam (born to Mrikandu, who choses an exceptional son cursed with early death versus a dull son who has a normal life when Shiva grants him a boon) was supposed to die at the age of 16. But he famously evades Yama himself by his mastery of this mrityunjaya prayer – averting his own certain death.

Still, the prayer occurs suddenly in the Rig Veda and is clearly separate from the other verses before it, which are devoted to simple prayers to the Maruts as can be seen below:

HYMN LIX. Maruts.
1. WHOMSO ye rescue here and there, whomso ye guide, O Deities,
To him give shelter, Agni, Mitra, Varuṇa, ye Maruts, and thou Aryaman.
2 Through your kind favour, Gods, on some auspicious day, the worshipper subdues his foes.
That man increases home and strengthening ample food who brings you offerings as ye list.
3 Vasiṣṭha will not overlook the lowliest one among you all.
O Maruts, of our Soma juice effused to-day drink all of you with eager haste.
4 Your succour in the battle injures not the man to whom ye, Heroes, grant your gifts.
May your most recent favour turn to us again. Come quickly, ye who fain would drink.
5 Come hitherward to drink the juice, O ye whose bounties give you joy.
These offerings are for you, these, Maruts, I present. Go not to any place but this.
6 Sit on our sacred grass, be graciously inclined to give the wealth for which we long,
To take delight, ye Maruts, Friends of all, with Svāhā, in sweet Soma juice.
7 Decking the beauty of their forms in secret the Swans with purple backs have flown down hither.
Around me all the Company hath settled, like joyous Heroes glad in our libation.
8 Maruts, the man whose wrath is hard to master, he who would slay us ere we think, O Vasus,
May he be tangled in the toils of mischief; smite ye him down with your most flaming weapon.
9 O Maruts, ye consuming Gods, enjoy this offering brought for you,
To help us, ye who slay the foe.
10 Sharers of household sacrifice, come, Maruts, stay not far away,
That ye may help us, Bounteous Ones.
11 Here, Self-strong Maruts, yea, even here. ye Sages with your sunbright skins
I dedicate your sacrifice.
12 Tryambaka we worship, sweet augmenter of prosperity.
As from its stem the cucumber, so may I be released from death, not reft of immortality.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/index.htm

Shiva was not a part of the pantheon of the Vedic gods (Shivam was used in the sense of good in Rig Veda). Shiva is usually equated with the vedic Rudra (God of the storms and also supposed to be a god of illness or curing – the one to whom you pray for relief from diseases – so appropriate here) but Rudra was not supposed to be three eyed. Triambaka is not repeated elsewhere in Rig Veda (perhaps once only). Zeus and Jupiter are however occasionally depicted as three eyed, the three being taken to represent all seeing. Rig veda of course antecedes these Gods by a good millennium and a half. However Shiva as we now know him might have evolved in the second century BCE keeping the three eyed Zeus as a model (just as the Satapatha Brahmana, perhaps 800BC, obviously was influenced by the depiction of the great flood described by the Jews and Mesopotamians.

The possibility of this Mrityunjaya prayer being a later interpolation or translocation from elsewhere in the Rigveda during re-arrangement cannot be ruled out.