Jarrod Whitaker examines the ritualized poetic construction of male identity in the Rigveda, India's oldest Sanskrit text, arguing that an important aspect of early Vedic life involves the sustained promotion and embodiment of what it means to be a true man. This important book cuts sensitively to the core of the construction of masculinity in Vedic family, clan, and tribal society. From early hymns that reflect expansion through seasonal migrations to the hegemonic patriarchy embodied in state formation that closes the Rgvedic canon, Whitaker details a consistent androcentric ideology that lauds strength, intimidation, and violence through images of the hyper-masculine body and soma drinking of the god Indra. A needed but rare convergence of philology with gender, body, and ritual studies.