Atharvaveda अथर्ववेद

What it is

The Atharvaveda is the fourth Veda, named after the ancient seer families of Atharvan and Aṅgiras. Its roughly 730 hymns, with about 6,000 verses, are closest to the concerns of ordinary life: healing from illness, protection from harm, love and marriage, children, a peaceful home, good harvests and a just king, alongside deep reflections on the nature of the universe.

How it is arranged

It has twenty books. The first books hold short hymns arranged by length; later books contain longer hymns, among them the Hymn to the Earth that opens book 12 and hymns to Time (kāla) in book 19. Two recensions survive, the Śaunaka and the Paippalāda. The Muṇḍaka, Praśna and Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣads belong to the Atharvaveda.

What it teaches

The Atharvaveda prays for health, using healing herbs and waters, for long life, and for protection. It asks for harmony: "Let your hearts be one, your minds be one" (3.30). Its Hymn to the Earth (12.1) honours the land and its rivers, forests and peoples, and says, "The Earth is my mother and I am her child." It also asks bold questions about the support of the universe, about time and about the highest reality.

What it can mean in your life

This is the Veda that speaks to the worries of every household: illness, quarrels, fear and hope for one’s children. Its prayers for peace (śānti) are still recited at the end of rituals and gatherings. Its reverence for the Earth reads today as a call to care for the planet, and its knowledge of healing plants is often linked with the later tradition of Āyurveda.

Where to begin

Begin with the Hymn to the Earth (12.1), then the hymn of harmony (3.30) and one of the healing hymns. The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, only twelve verses on the syllable OM, is a good next step.

Origins and dating

The Atharvaveda was compiled after the Ṛgveda, though some of its material may be as old. It was accepted as the fourth Veda later than the other three, and in the tradition it is śruti like them.

The text on Vedyatra

The Sanskrit here is the Śaunaka recension of the Atharvaveda as Sanskrit Wikisource gives it, one page per sūkta, and every verse links to the exact page revision it was taken from. The Wikisource text is unaccented, so the verses here carry no accent marks, unlike the Ṛgveda. Many pages also print Sāyaṇa's commentary after the hymn; it is not part of the text here. That gives 5,944 verses in 756 sūktas across the twenty kāṇḍas.

References here are kāṇḍa, sūkta and verse as Wikisource numbers them. In most kāṇḍas these match the standard edition of Roth and Whitney and Whitney's translation. In a few (kāṇḍas 7 to 9 and 11 to 13) Wikisource divides the long hymns as Sāyaṇa's edition does, often splitting one hymn into its paryāyas, so a sūkta number here can differ from Whitney's; where a Wikisource page gives the other number, a later note on the passage will show both. Famous hymns such as the Hymn to the Earth (12.1) and the hymn on harmony in the family (3.30) have the same numbers in both.

The pages were typed by many volunteers, so Vedyatra cleaned them: links and notes written into the text, anuvāka counters and stray numbers were removed, and every rule is in the open-source import tool. Where a page numbers its verses from 1 more than once, as when it holds several of Sāyaṇa's sections, the verses are numbered in order. Where a page leaves out a verse number, the verse keeps the text as printed and the number is skipped.

The Atharvaveda also survives in a second recension, the Paippalāda, rediscovered in Kashmir and Odisha manuscripts, which differs in order and in many hymns. It is not included yet.

Passages to start with

• Atharvaveda 12.1, the Hymn to the Earth: "The Earth is my mother and I am her child."
• Atharvaveda 3.30: A hymn for harmony in the family.
• Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad: Twelve verses on OM and the states of consciousness.