S Rudra

Although Rudra, under his euphemistic epithet Śiva, “the kindly one,” has, of course, an extraordinarily great future in classical Hinduism, in the R̥gveda he has a very circumscribed role, with only three complete hymns dedicated to him. He has two major and complementary characteristics: on the one hand, he is fierce and malevolent, with an often inexplicable anger that needs to be appeased; on the other, he is a healer, who controls the remedies for disease. He is also, as noted above, the father of the Maruts, who are much more prominent in our text.