Richa (), also rendered rucha, refers to a

mantra A mantra ( ; Pali: ''mantra'') or mantram (Devanagari: मन्त्रम्) is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words (most often in an Indo-Iranian language like Sanskrit or Avestan) belie ...

, usually one in line, found in the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

religious scriptures, the

Vedas FIle:Atharva-Veda samhita page 471 illustration.png, upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the ''Atharvaveda''. The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of relig ...

. It is a term used to refer to each verse of the

Rigveda The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...

Etymology

The etymological origin of the richa is the Sanskrit word ''Ṛc'' (ऋच्), which means ''to praise''. Richa, is therefore, one ṛc after the other. Other meanings of ''ṛc'' are splendor, worship, or a hymn. Richa can also refer to a verbal composition of celestial sounds called shrutis; the

Gayatri Mantra The Gāyatrī Mantra (), also known as the Sāvitrī Mantra (), is a sacred mantra from the ''Ṛig Veda'' ( Mandala 3.62.10), dedicated to the Vedic deity Savitr. The mantra is attributed to the rajarshi Vishvamitra. The term Gāyatr ...

is a rucha as well.

Literature

Rigveda

In the

, the richa refers to individual verses, which are collected into a sukta, translated as a hymn. The suktas are combined into the 10 mandalas, the books of the Rigveda. For example, the famous

Purusha sukta Purusha Sukta (, ) is a hymn in the Rigveda, dedicated to the Purusha, the "Cosmic Being". It is considered to have been a relatively late addition to the scripture — probably, to accord theological sanction to an increasingly unequal Kuru po ...

has 16 richas. It is the 90th sukta of the 10th mandala of the Rigveda. The Rigveda contains about 10,600 richas, organised into 191 suktas. The other three Vedas use a similar terminology. One of the richas is composed in praise of the

dawn Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the diffuse sky radiation, appearance of indirect sunlight being Rayleigh scattering, scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc ha ...

: Another richa is composed in praise of the

night Night, or nighttime, is the period of darkness when the Sun is below the horizon. Sunlight illuminates one side of the Earth, leaving the other in darkness. The opposite of nighttime is daytime. Earth's rotation causes the appearance of ...

: {{Blockquote, text=The darkness she produces; soon advancing
She calls her sister morning to return,
And then each darksome shadow melts away.
Kind goddess, be propitious to thy servants
who at thy coming straightaway seek repose,
Like birds who nightly nestle in the trees, title=Rigveda

References

Hindu mantras Mantras