Which one of the following statements about Rig Vedic goddesses is correct?

Q: What is the answer to CDS (I) 2025 GK Q44?

B. Correct — B, Sinivali bestows children. Sinivali is a minor Rig Vedic goddess associated with fecundity and childbirth, invoked to grant offspring and to ease delivery — she belongs with the day of the new moon and with the powers that govern conception. The item works by shuffling four goddesses against four functions so that every option looks half-familiar, and the way through it is to fix the two famous ones first. Ushas is the goddess of dawn, one of the most celebrated deities in the Rig Veda and the subject of some of its finest hymns; she is not a goddess of health, so option (a) fails, and because she holds the dawn, option (c) cannot give that office to anyone else. Aditi is the boundless mother of the Adityas — the great maternal figure of the pantheon, associated with freedom and release, including release from sickness and from guilt — and she is emphatically not the dawn. Raka, like Sinivali, belongs to the small group of goddesses attached to the lunar days and to childbearing; she is not the goddess of speech, an office that belongs to Vac. So the two well-known goddesses have been given each other's neighbours' work, and only the statement about Sinivali is left standing. (Provisional — pending the official UPSC key.)

(a)Ushas represents freedom from sickness.
(b)Sinivali bestows children.
(c)Aditi is goddess of dawn.
(d)Raka is goddess of speech.

Answer

Why

Correct — B, Sinivali bestows children. Sinivali is a minor Rig Vedic goddess associated with fecundity and childbirth, invoked to grant offspring and to ease delivery — she belongs with the day of the new moon and with the powers that govern conception. The item works by shuffling four goddesses against four functions so that every option looks half-familiar, and the way through it is to fix the two famous ones first. Ushas is the goddess of dawn, one of the most celebrated deities in the Rig Veda and the subject of some of its finest hymns; she is not a goddess of health, so option (a) fails, and because she holds the dawn, option (c) cannot give that office to anyone else. Aditi is the boundless mother of the Adityas — the great maternal figure of the pantheon, associated with freedom and release, including release from sickness and from guilt — and she is emphatically not the dawn. Raka, like Sinivali, belongs to the small group of goddesses attached to the lunar days and to childbearing; she is not the goddess of speech, an office that belongs to Vac. So the two well-known goddesses have been given each other's neighbours' work, and only the statement about Sinivali is left standing.

Why the others are wrong

(a)Ushas represents freedom from sickness. — Ushas is the goddess of dawn, and among the most praised deities in the Rig Veda. Freedom and release — including from sickness — belong rather to Aditi.
(c)Aditi is goddess of dawn. — Aditi is the boundless one, mother of the Adityas. The dawn is Ushas. This option and option (a) are the same swap made in both directions.
(d)Raka is goddess of speech. — Raka belongs with Sinivali among the goddesses of the lunar days and of childbearing. Speech is Vac, who has her own celebrated hymn in the Rig Veda.

Concept

The Rig Veda is overwhelmingly a collection of hymns to male deities — Indra, Agni, Varuna, Soma — but it does name a number of goddesses. Ushas, the dawn, is by far the most prominent and receives around twenty hymns. Aditi is the mother of the Adityas and stands for boundlessness and release. Vac personifies speech and utterance. Prithvi is the earth, usually paired with Dyaus, the sky. Beyond these are minor figures such as Sinivali, Raka, Gungu and Anumati, attached to the phases of the moon and to childbirth, invoked briefly and in small numbers of verses.

Match-and-shuffle items like this one are best attacked from the strongest fact you hold rather than from the option you are least sure about. Almost every candidate knows that Ushas is the dawn. Fixing that immediately kills option (c), which gives the dawn to Aditi, and casts doubt on option (a), which gives Ushas some other office. That leaves (b) and (d), both concerning minor goddesses, and the tiebreaker is that speech in the Rig Veda is unambiguously Vac — there is a famous hymn in which she speaks in her own voice. Once Vac is placed, (d) falls and (b) is what remains. The general lesson is worth more than the individual fact: in a four-way shuffle, one confident identification usually eliminates two options at once, because the paper has to place the displaced function somewhere.

Key facts

Ushas is the Rig Vedic goddess of dawn and receives around twenty hymns, among the most admired in the collection.
Aditi is the boundless mother of the Adityas, associated with freedom and release, including from sickness and guilt.
Vac is the personification of speech, with a celebrated hymn spoken in her own voice.
Sinivali and Raka are minor goddesses connected with the lunar days and with childbearing; Sinivali is invoked for offspring.
The Rig Vedic pantheon is dominated by male deities — Indra, Agni, Varuna and Soma receive the great bulk of the hymns.
Prithvi, the earth, usually appears paired with Dyaus, the sky, rather than alone.

Four goddesses, four offices — and how the paper swapped them

Ushas→Dawn. Around twenty hymns. The option gives her freedom from sickness — wrong.

Aditi→Boundless mother of the Adityas; freedom and release, including from sickness. The option gives her the dawn — wrong.

Sinivali→Minor goddess of the lunar days and of childbirth; invoked to bestow offspring. The option states this correctly.

Raka→Also of the lunar days and childbearing. The option gives her speech, which belongs to Vac — wrong.

Fix Ushas as the dawn and two options fall at once; Vac as speech settles the third.

Study next

Ushas in the Rig Veda — the dawn hymns and their imageryAditi, the Adityas, and the idea of rita, cosmic orderVac and the Vedic conception of speech as a powerMinor goddesses of the lunar days: Sinivali, Raka, Gungu, AnumatiThe changing place of goddesses from the Rig Veda to the later Puranic pantheon

Common traps

Reading Aditi as a dawn or sky goddess because her name sounds cosmic; she is the boundless mother, not the dawn.
Assigning speech to any goddess other than Vac — it is one of the few unambiguous attributions in the collection.
Assuming a minor goddess must be the wrong answer; here the correct statement is about one of the least famous.

As a single-correct statement item shuffling deities against functions, or as a straight match-the-pairs between Vedic deities and what they preside over.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
In the Rig Veda, the goddess who personifies speech is
- (a)Ushas
- (b)Aditi
- (c)Vac
- (d)Sinivali
Answer(c) Vac — speech personified, with a well-known hymn in which she speaks in her own voice.
practice — not a real PYQ
Aditi, in the Rig Veda, is best described as
- (a)the goddess of dawn
- (b)the mother of the Adityas
- (c)the consort of Agni
- (d)the goddess of the waters
Answer(b) the mother of the Adityas — the boundless one, associated with freedom and release rather than with the dawn, which belongs to Ushas.