Rigvedic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to the ancient Indian collection of hymns and religious texts forming one of the oldest layers of the Vedas; pertaining to the Rigveda as the foundational scripture of early Hinduism; associated with the hymns, rituals, and spiritual concepts found in this sacred text
2. Connected with the earliest canonical literature of Vedic tradition, specifically the Rigveda, which comprises poetic verses dedicated to various deities; descriptive of the cultural and religious elements rooted in this archaic scripture; indicating origin or influence from this primary Vedic source
3. Denoting the characteristics or content of the Rigveda, the oldest of the four Vedas, known for its archaic Sanskrit hymns used in ritual worship; relating to the religious ideas, ceremonies, and linguistic features documented in these ancient Indian hymns; reflecting the ethos and theology of Vedic civilization as preserved in this text

Etymology: The Rigveda is the oldest of the four Vedas, a collection of Sanskrit hymns composed in India over many centuries, and "Rigvedic" is simply the English adjective for anything that belongs to it. Its making is a plain one: the name joins "Rigveda" with the English suffix "-ic," which comes from Latin "-icus" by way of Old French "-ique" and Middle English "-ik." That suffix has been used to make adjectives from names and nouns since the Greek and Latin days, so "Rigvedic" carries the same shape as words like "Homeric" or "Biblical." The surprise lies less in the word than in the suffix's journey. Its ancestor reaches back to a Proto-Indo-European form, *-kos, which means the suffix was already doing this job in a language spoken long before any written texts. English took it up through a chain of medieval French and Latin usage, and the form we use today settled in the spoken language long before anyone had heard of the Rigveda in English.

Synonyms: Rig Vedic