Deity · Vedic · c. 1400 BCE
Rudra
Also called Shiva (later)
The fierce archer who sends disease and withholds it — addressed in the Rigveda with open fear, and later absorbed into Shiva.
Deep source base
The hymns to him are not praise but negotiation: his arrows are disease in cattle and in people, and the request is that he shoot elsewhere. The Atharvaveda thickens this into a working liturgy of avoidance, under names the Rigveda barely uses. What makes him matter here is where it goes — the god you ask to stay away becomes Shiva, one of the two great sovereign deities of later Hinduism, without ever losing the dangerous half; the Mahabharata has him enter a man and do the killing through him. Most figures in this compendium travel from god to demon. Rudra shows the other road out of being feared, which is to be promoted rather than condemned.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
None under that name. His cult continues as Shiva's, which is less a cult centre than a change of name.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Rigveda · c. 1500-1200 BCE
- Rank
- The Howler
- Pantheon
- Vedic
- Order
- Vedic pantheon
- Base of operations
- None under that name. His cult continues as Shiva's, which is less a cult centre than a change of name.
- Era
- c. 1400 BCE
- Traditions
- Vedic & Hindu
- Placed in
- Devas and Asuras
Traits
- Domain
- Storm, disease and its cure, wildness, destruction
- Traditional form
- Wild-haired archer of the mountains
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Rudra, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- malefic3
- material1
1 mark
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
3 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 3 texts that names Rudra, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
3 texts spanning roughly 1,300 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Rudra, Rudra (Bhava, Sarva), Rudra (Shiva)
Petitioned to turn his arrows aside; both the sender of illness and the possessor of a thousand remedies.
The god you address in order to be spared, under names the Rigveda barely uses. His arrows are disease in cattle and in people, and the hymns ask him to shoot elsewhere. A god propitiated rather than praised is the immediate ancestor of the Shiva of later Hinduism, and this is where the propitiation is thickest.
The Vedic god of the arrows now a supreme deity, and in the same night-massacre book he enters Ashwatthama and does the killing through him. The corpus holds this against the Rigvedic Rudra deliberately: the distance between a god asked to shoot elsewhere and a god who possesses a man in order to shoot is the whole of the change, and both ends of it are cited.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Rudra?
Is Rudra the same as Sekhmet?
What rank is Rudra?
How else is Rudra spelled?
What is Rudra said to do?
How old is Rudra?
Nearest in the corpus
If Rudra is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Indra
King of the Devas · Vedic
The thunderbolt-wielding king of the gods, who slays the serpent Vritra and releases the pent waters. It is the Indo-European form of the same combat myth as Baal against Yam.
Agni
God of Fire · Vedic
Fire as the mouth of the gods — the one who carries offerings upward, and so the messenger of the Vedic system.
The Asuras
Class of Beings · Vedic
In the earliest Rigveda a title of honour for the highest gods; by the later Vedic period, the demonic opponents of the devas. The same word, inverted within one tradition.
Varuna
Keeper of Cosmic Order · Vedic
Binder of the oath-breaker with his noose. The earliest hymns call him *asura*, using the word as an honorific, long before it turned demonic.
Yama
Lord of Death · Vedic
The first mortal to die, and so the king of the dead who judges those who follow. Azrael and Anubis hold the same office under other names.
Ravana
Rakshasa King · Vedic
The ten-headed antagonist of the Ramayana — a devout scholar, musician and ascetic whose downfall is a single act of pride.
The books behind Rudra
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Rigveda
Anonymous; multiple rishi families · c. 1500-1200 BCE · Vedic Sanskrit
Read Rigveda in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Unknown author · Wikimedia file page
The Atharvaveda
Anonymous; attributed to the seers Atharvan and Angiras · c. 1000 BCE · Vedic Sanskrit
Read The Atharvaveda in full ↗The Mahabharata
Attributed to Vyasa; tr. Kisari Mohan Ganguli · c. 400 BCE – 400 CE · Sanskrit
Read The Mahabharata in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.