rudra mfn. (prob.) crying, howling, roaring, dreadful, terrific, terrible, horrible (applied to the Aśvins, Agni, Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, and the spaśaḥ), RV.; AV. (accord. to others ‘red, shining, glittering’, fr. a √ rud or rudh connected with rudhira; others ‘strong, having or bestowing strength or power’, fr. a √ rud = vṛd, vṛdh; native authorities give also the following meanings, ‘driving away evil’; ‘running about and roaring’, fr. ru + dra = 2. dru; ‘praiseworthy, to be praised’; ‘a praiser, worshipper’ = stotṛ, Naigh. iii, 16)

rudra m. ‘Roarer or Howler’, N. of the god of tempests and father and ruler of the Rudras and Maruts (in the Veda he is closely connected with Indra and still more with Agni, the god of fire, which, as a destroying agent, rages and crackles like the roaring storm, and also with Kāla or Time the all-consumer, with whom he is afterwards identified; though generally represented as a destroying deity, whose terrible shafts bring death or disease on men and cattle, he has also the epithet śiva, ‘benevolent’ or ‘auspicious’, and is even supposed to possess healing powers from his chasing away vapours and purifying the atmosphere; in the later mythology the word śiva, which does not occur as a name in the Veda, was employed, first as an euphemistic epithet and then as a real name for Rudra, who lost his special connection with storms and developed into a form of the disintegrating and reintegrating principle; while a new class of beings, described as eleven [or thirty-three] in number, though still called Rudras, took the place of the original Rudras or Maruts: in VP. i, 7, Rudra is said to have sprung from Brahmā's forehead, and to have afterwards separated himself into a figure half male and half female, the former portion separating again into the 11 Rudras, hence these later Rudras are sometimes regarded as inferior manifestations of Śiva, and most of their names, which are variously given in the different Purāṇas, are also names of Śiva ; those of the VāyuP. are Ajaikapād, Ahir-budhnya, Hara, Nirṛta, Īśvara, Bhuvana, Aṅgāraka, Ardha-ketu, Mṛtyu, Sarpa, Kapālin; accord. to others the Rudras are represented as children of Kaśyapa and Surabhi or of Brahmā and Surabhi or of Bhūta and Su-rūpā; accord. to VP. i, 8, Rudra is one of the 8 forms of Śiva; elsewhere he is reckoned among the Dik-pālas as regent of the north-east quarter), RV. &c. &c. (cf. RTL. 75 &c.)

N. of the number ‘eleven’ (from the 11 Rudras), VarBṛS.

the eleventh, Cat.

(in astrol.) N. of the first Muhūrta

rudrā (ā), f. a species of creeping plant, L.

N. of a wife of Vasu-deva, VāyuP.