Tr. Mitra of purified understanding I call, and Varuna who destroys our hurters, together effecting a clear luminous thought.
pūtadakşam him whose skill of understanding is purified; mitram huve Mitra I call; risādasam who swallows, eats the hurters (that is who destroys them); varuram ca and Varuna (I call). How made are those both, Varuna and Mitra ? ghṛtācim, ghștāci is that which attains luminosity, ghệtam; that luminous dhiyam sustaining thought; sādhantā effecting.
The term dakṣa occurs everywhere in the sense of strength; so does Sayana explain it. Still a scrutiny of its uses in many places shows that the strength is the strength of skill in understanding. Accepting the manifoldness of strength, bala, we would say that the term dakṣa indicates an intelligence of discriminating between good and bad, true and untrue, and deciding upon the truth of things. Hence the word dakṣa is commonly taken to mean skill in intelligence. Mahidhara says it means skill of the sense of perception. Others, the moderns included, are confused. We shall consider this again while explaining the meaning of the last Rik of this hymn.
gḥṛtācim: adjective of dhī. The root ghṛ belonging to the 3rd conjugation is in the sense of flow as well as luminosity. Its use in the sense of luminousness is to be seen in mantras as “I make the Flame luminous with ghee-offering.” The adjective is apposite in the sense of luminous and hence bright, shining thought. It also occurs in the sense of flow. That is why ghṛta means commonly clarified butter. But in the Veda, ghṛta is luminous. Here alone for the first time in Rik Samhita is ghṛta in the form of ghṛtācī used as an adjective to dhī. This is one of the symbolic terms that are pre-eminent in the bringing out of the secret sense of the Veda; like the term kavi, kratu, bhadra, dakşa, şta, etc. it is used in its settled sense in the mantras, but never losing its derivative sense. We shall consider ahead the purport of this sub-hymn.
Here is the second Rik in the sub-hymn to Mitra-Varuna :