This whole text is called the Sri Rudram, and also the Rudra-prashna, the Rudradhyaya, or the Shatarudriya. It comes from the Krishna Yajur Veda, and it splits into two halves, the Namakam (Taittiriya Samhita 4.5) and the Chamakam (Taittiriya Samhita 4.7).

Who Rudra is

The Rig Veda sees Rudra in the storm, the mountain, and the arrow, the leader of the Maruts, who brings disease and death and also takes them away. One of the great hymns to Rudra (Rig Veda 2.33) calls him the physician of physicians, and in the same breath begs him to hold back his arrows. Shiva, the auspicious one, is an address that settled on him over time, and the Sri Rudram sits among the texts where Rudra can be seen becoming Shiva.

The Namakam, which bows

The Namakam takes its name from its refrain नमो, meaning salutation. Its eleven anuvakas bow to Rudra in his every form, in his weapons, in the mountains and rivers, and in the people of every trade. The eighth anuvaka holds the five-syllable mantra, नमः शिवाय (namaḥ śivāya). Alongside it the Tryambaka, or Mahamrityunjaya, mantra is also recited, the one found at Rig Veda 7.59.12. The Namakam’s whole motion is surrender.

The Chamakam, which asks

The Chamakam takes its name from its refrain च मे (ca me), meaning and to me, and from its endlessly returning line, च मे यज्ञेन कल्पन्ताम् (ca me yajñena kalpantām), meaning let all these come to me through the yajna (fire-rite). It too has eleven anuvakas. After the Namakam has finished bowing, the Chamakam opens its hands. It asks for almost the entire platter of life: strength and the root energies, the limbs of the body and the powers of mind and speech, faith and truth, grain and cattle, gold and wealth, the seasons and the gods, and the very implements and meters of the yajna itself. The eleventh anuvaka is a chant of counting, the odd numbers from 1 to 33, and the even numbers in multiples of four, up to 48, as if everything that can be counted. It asks for worldly abundance and liberation, both in a single breath.

The life of the text

Its central rite is the Rudrabhishekam. One of its older homes is in the altar-ritual of the Agnichayana, where the Shatarudriya calms the hundred-formed power that has settled into the altar (Shatapatha Brahmana). And there is an ascending ladder of recitation, where eleven units make the next single unit, one Rudri, then the Laghurudra (eleven Rudris), then the Maharudra (one hundred and twenty-one Rudris), and then the Atirudra (thirteen hundred and thirty-one Rudris).

Two stories

Two stories stand behind it. One is from a Brahmana, where the birth of the name Rudra is tied to a weeping child, who cries and is given names, and the crying itself is read into the name. The other is the story of Daksha’s yajna, where Rudra-Shiva is kept out of a great sacrifice, his consort Sati gives up her life, his fury tears that sacrifice apart, and in the end he is given his share. A ritual truth hides inside it: this power has to be honored and given its portion.