The Rigveda presents itself as a carefully layered revelation, arranged in a clear hierarchy of textual units. At the broadest level stand the ten maṇḍalas, often understood as “books” or “circles,” which together encompass the body of hymns. Within each maṇḍala, the hymns (sūktas) are further gathered into anuvākas, sectional groupings that function as ordered clusters for study and recitation. This yields a structural progression that can be expressed as: maṇḍala → anuvāka → sūkta → ṛc (verse), a sequence that reflects both literary and liturgical concerns.

The ten maṇḍalas themselves are not arbitrary compilations but bear the imprint of distinct lineages and devotional emphases. Maṇḍalas 2–7 are often called the “family books,” each associated with a particular ṛṣi family, while Maṇḍala 1 and Maṇḍala 8 preserve hymns from various seer traditions, including the Kaṇvas. Maṇḍala 9 is devoted entirely to Soma Pavamāna, and Maṇḍala 10 gathers a wide range of material, from ritual and social hymns to more speculative and philosophical compositions. In this way, the maṇḍalas preserve both continuity of lineage and diversity of spiritual expression.

Within each maṇḍala, the anuvākas offer a more finely grained organization, serving as intermediate units that group related hymns. These sections are not uniform in size or number; rather, they vary from maṇḍala to maṇḍala, reflecting different patterns of arrangement. In the Śākala tradition, which has become the standard point of reference, each of the ten maṇḍalas is divided into a specific number of anuvākas, collectively amounting to a substantial network of recitational units. These anuvākas gather hymns in ways that support memorization, teaching, and ritual deployment, and they often bring together sūktas addressed to particular deities or sharing related formal features.

The overall organization thus reveals a text that is at once systematic and living, ordered yet spacious enough to hold many streams of inspiration. The family books exhibit a strong internal discipline, while the later and more varied maṇḍalas display the widening horizon of Vedic reflection. Anuvākas, nested within this larger architecture, help maintain coherence and continuity in the oral tradition, allowing the hymns to be transmitted as meaningful sequences rather than isolated utterances. Through this layered structure, the Rigvedic corpus becomes not merely a collection of hymns, but a carefully articulated cosmos of sound, lineage, and worship.