Aryaman

Also Known As: Sanskrit aryamán, as a common noun “companion” or “bosom friend”, especially the friend who asks for a woman in marriage on another’s behalf; Aryamā in the nominative; the Avestan cognate is Airyaman
Region/Culture: South Asia
Mythos: Hindu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is the Aditya of companionship and the marriage bond, invoked to lead a bride to her husband and to keep the couple together into old age.
Role in Mythos: In the Rigveda he is the third of the closely linked sovereign sons of Aditi, almost always named beside Mitra and Varuna, and in later tradition he becomes one of the twelve Adityas and the chief of the ancestors.
Relation to Humans: Brides and grooms call on him at the wedding, and the Atharvaveda names him the finder of husbands. In the Bhagavad Gita and the Puranas he stands over the dead fathers, and one Purana makes his children the stock from which humankind was formed.

At a Vedic wedding the bride is walked away from her father’s house, and the verses spoken over her name the gods who are walking with her. “Let Aryaman and Bhaga lead us,” runs the marriage hymn in the tenth book of the Rigveda; “perfect, O Gods, the union of the wife and husband.” Later in the same hymn the groom tells her that Aryaman, Bhaga, Savitar and Purandhi have given her to him to be mistress of his household, and the closing verses ask Aryaman to keep the pair well until old age comes near. Of all the gods in that crowded hymn, he is the one whose name means what is happening. In ordinary Vedic speech an aryaman was a companion, and in particular the friend who goes to ask for a woman’s hand on someone else’s behalf.

That double life, half god and half job description, is the key to him. The Sanskritist Arthur Macdonell, cataloguing the Vedic gods in 1897, counted about a hundred mentions of Aryaman in the Rigveda and found him so lacking in individual features that the old Vedic word-list, the Naighantuka, leaves him out of its roll of gods altogether. In all but two passages he appears in company, nearly always beside Mitra and Varuna. In fewer than a dozen the word means only “comrade” or “groomsman”. The poets played on the overlap. One hymn tells the fire god Agni that at his birth he is Varuna, when kindled he becomes Mitra, and “Aryaman art thou as regardeth maidens.” The fire that witnesses a wedding takes on the name of the god who arranges one.

He is old, older than India. The same name turns up in the Avesta, the scriptures of the Iranian Zoroastrians, as Airyaman, and Mary Boyce, writing in the Encyclopaedia Iranica in 1984, traced both back to an Indo-Iranian god whose name meant “friend” or “companion”, a power who embodied friendship and the formal alliances between families that marriage seals. What the word first meant is still argued over. The German Indologist Paul Thieme, in his 1938 study Der Fremdling im Rigveda, read the related word arí as “stranger” and saw in this family of words an ethic of protecting the guest; others have taken arí as lord, rival or enemy, and the question has never been settled.

Where Aryaman lives in the hymns is in a trio. The Adityas, the sons of the goddess Aditi, are a loose group in the Rigveda, their number and names never quite fixed. One hymn, the twenty-seventh of the second book, names six: Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Varuna, Daksha and Amsha. Macdonell thought that in that hymn only Mitra, Varuna and Aryaman were really meant. These three are kings. What is far away is near to them. They uphold everything that moves and everything that stands still, they look into human hearts and tell the honest man from the deceiver, and they hate falsehood and punish it. Worshippers ask them to forgive sin and to spread their protection over them the way birds spread their wings over their young. When the poets want a picture of steady, watchful order, these three are the ones they call, and Aryaman is nearly always the third name in the line.

He has very little story. No Vedic hymn has him fight a demon, father a hero or lose his temper. His work happens at doorways, when one family hands a daughter to another and both sides agree to treat each other as kin. The Atharvaveda, in its own long wedding liturgy, puts the plainest words of all into the rite: “Worship we pay to Aryaman, finder of husbands, kindly friend.” In the same rite the bride is led around “Aryaman’s fire”, and Dhatar is asked to endow the couple with strength along with Bhaga and Aryaman. The god of the bond turns out to be most present in the room where the bond is made.

The night sky gave him the one physical thing he owns. The Taittiriya Brahmana, as the lexicographer Monier Monier-Williams recorded, calls the Milky Way aryamṇaḥ panthāḥ, Aryaman’s path, a pale road of stars spilled across the dark. Later astrology set him over a lunar mansion as well: in the Brihat Samhita of the astronomer Varahamihira he presides over Uttaraphalguni.

Over the following centuries the figure shifted, the way Vedic gods tend to. The Brahmanas began to count twelve Adityas and to tie them to the twelve months, and in the epics and Puranas the Adityas settle into a band of twelve sun-gods, sons of Aditi by the sage Kashyapa, with Vishnu as the greatest of them. Aryaman keeps his place in that list but picks up a new office. In the Bhagavad Gita, when Krishna names the supreme member of each class of being, he says, “Of the ancestors I am Aryaman.” The god who once presided over the joining of the living now heads the Pitrs, the forefathers who receive offerings from their descendants. The Bhagavata Purana gives him a wife, Matrika, and children called the Charshanis, among whom, it says, Brahma fashioned the human race. A deity who began as a matchmaker ended up as a grandfather to everybody.

In Iran the Avestan Airyaman took a different road. The Airyema Ishyo, a short prayer in the old Gathic language, asks the longed-for Airyaman to come so that the men and women of Zarathustra may rejoice. The twenty-second chapter of the Vendidad tells how the evil spirit Angra Mainyu loosed nine, ninety, nine hundred, nine thousand and ninety thousand diseases on the world, and Ahura Mazda sent his herald Nairyosangha to Airyaman’s house to ask for help. Airyaman came at once to the mountain of the holy questions, bringing nine kinds of stallions and nine kinds of camels and the rest of his train, and spoke the spells that drive off sickness and death. The Indian and Iranian gods have parted company by then, one a quiet member of a royal trio, the other a healer with a herd behind him.

Aryaman’s power is the power of agreement. He makes strangers into in-laws, keeps a household together until old age, and stands with Mitra and Varuna behind every promise that men make to one another. He can see a lie and punish it. Yet he never acts alone in the hymns, never wins a battle or rescues anyone, and his very name keeps sliding back into an ordinary noun for a friend at a wedding. He is the god of the handshake, and a handshake needs two other people before he has anything to do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Aryaman in Hindu mythology?

Aryaman is a Vedic god, one of the Adityas, the sons of the goddess Aditi. In the Rigveda he is nearly always invoked together with Mitra and Varuna, and he is the god of companionship and the marriage bond. His name was also an ordinary word for a companion or the friend who asks for a bride on another’s behalf.

What is Aryaman the god of?

Aryaman presides over friendship, alliance and marriage. The Rigveda’s wedding hymn asks Aryaman and Bhaga to lead the bride and perfect the union, and the Atharvaveda calls Aryaman the finder of husbands. In the later tradition of the Bhagavad Gita he is also the chief of the Pitrs, the ancestors.

Why is the Milky Way called the path of Aryaman?

The Taittiriya Brahmana calls the Milky Way aryamṇaḥ panthāḥ, meaning Aryaman’s path. It is the only physical feature the Vedic texts attach to Aryaman, since no hymn describes his body.

What does Krishna say about Aryaman in the Bhagavad Gita?

In Bhagavad Gita 10.29 Krishna says that among the ancestors he is Aryaman. The verse places Aryaman at the head of the Pitrs, the departed forefathers, a role that belongs to the later tradition rather than to the Rigveda.

Is Aryaman the same as the Zoroastrian Airyaman?

Aryaman and the Avestan Airyaman share one name and descend from a common Indo-Iranian god whose name meant friend or companion. In Zoroastrian texts Airyaman developed into a healer: in the Vendidad he answers Ahura Mazda’s call and drives off the diseases sent by Angra Mainyu.