Mandala 1

First book of the Rigveda
The first Mandala ("book") of the Rigveda has 191 suktas which has 2006 hymns. Together with Mandala 10, it forms the latest part of the Rigveda. Its composition likely dates to the late Vedic period (1000 500 BCE) or the Early Iron Age (around 1000 BCE).

Max Muller described the character of the Vedic hymns as a form of henotheism, in which "numerous deities are successively praised as if they were one ultimate God." According to Graham, in the Vedic society it was believed that humans could contact the gods through the spoken utterances of the Vedic seers, and "the One Real" (ekam sat) in 1.164.46 refers to Vāc, both "speech" and goddess of speech, the "one ultimate, supreme God", and "one supreme Goddess." In later Vedic literature, "Speech or utterance is also identified with the supreme power or transcendent reality," and "equated with Brahman in this sense." Frauwallner states that "many gods are traced back to the one Godhead. The one (ekam) is not meant adjectively as a quality but as a substantive, as the upholding centre of reality." The Vedic henotheism may have grown out of a growing recognition of a "unitary essence beyond all the deities," in which the deities were conceptualized as pluralistic manifestations of the same divine essence beyond this plurality. The Vedic era conceptualization of the divine or the One, states Jeaneane Fowler, is more abstract than a monotheistic God, it is the Reality behind the phenomenal universe, which it treats as "limitless, indescribable, absolute principle", thus the Vedic divine is something of a panentheism.

Sukta Name Deity Rishi Metre Incipit 1.1 Agni Sukta Agni Madhushchandhas Vaishvamitra gayatri agním īḷe puróhitaṃ 1.22 Vishnu Sukta Vishnu Medhatithi Kanva gayatri prātaryújā ví bodhaya 1.32 Indra Sukta Indra Hiranyastupa Angiras trishtubh índrasya nú vīríyāṇi prá vocaṃ 1.89 Shanti Sukta Vishvedevas Gotama Rahugana jagati (trishtubh) â no bhadrâḥ krátavo yantu viśváto 1.90 Madhu Sukta Vishvedevas Gotama Rahugana gayatri (anushtubh) ṛjunītî no váruṇo 1.99 Agni Durga Sukta Agni Kashyapa Marica trishtubh jātávedase sunavāma sómam1.162 Ashvamedha Sukta The Horse Dīrghatamas Aucathya (trishtubh) mâ no mitró váruṇo aryamâyúr

The editio princeps of the book is due to Friedrich August Rosen, published posthumously in 1838. It was the earliest edition of a Rigvedic Mandala, predating Max Müller's edition of the entire Rigveda by more than 50 years.