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Atharvaveda Samhita is a collection of mantrās,
which is as sacred as the three other Samhitās, rik, yajus and
sāma. It is divided into 20 books or kāndās, having
a total of 730 hymns or sūktās or a total of 5,987 verses
or mantrās. Most of the mantrās are metrical; About 80 hymns are
in prose.
About a hundred suktās have only
one or two verses. They are all revealed to the descendants or
disciples of the lineage of the seers, Atharvan and Āngīras. There
is about twenty percent overlap between Rigveda Samhita and
Atharvaveda Samhita. [about 1,200 mantrās].
There is a continuity of the Hindu thought
from the ancient Vedic times upto the present day. So much so that
many of the epigrams or subhāşhitās found in all Indian
languages, not just Sanskrit, can be traced to the Atharvaveda
Samhita. Some of them are in section “Epigrams”. Atharvaveda
verses embody considerable symbolism. Please see section
“Symbolism”.
We give below a broad outline of the AVS,
with the number of hymns in the parenthesis.
1. Spiritual and psychological topics (90)
2. Various devās like Agni, Indra, Sun etc and
their psychological powers (100)
3. Stages of life: brahmachārya,
wedding, hospitality, ascetic phase
4. Health and healing (153) and physiology
(215)
5. Professions, caste, governance, nation and
community welfare, openness of society (52)
6. Mathematics, time (10)
7. Misc. topics like rituals, animals etc (40)
8. Hymn to Earth (1)
Erroneous view of Atharvaveda
A perusal of these essays should disabuse
the reader of the popular antipropaganda against the Atharvaveda
circulated by Western indologists like Whitney, Winternitz etc.,
and their Indian followers stating that Atharvaveda is full of
black magic spells and witchcraft. B.K. Ghosh’s statement “The
Atharvaveda is utterly different from the other three vedās. It
remained essentially what it was from the start—a prayer book of
the simple folk, haunted by ghosts and exploited by brahmins”,
reflects on his political posture and on his ignorance of the
entire book. The irony is that this statement occurs in a chapter
in the book ‘Vedic Age’ edited by R.C. Majumdar and published by
the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1965 with the explicit aim of
presenting a history of India from the Indian point of view!
However it is also appropriate to point
out that the basis for all the translation of the western scholars
is the Sanskrit commentary by the great scholar Sāyaņa. He felt
that the main use of the mantrās of the Veda is for the
performance of rituals. In many places, he gave a very narrow
ritual-based meaning for verses expressing profound wisdom.
[Most of the translation are from the book
“Hymns of the Vedas” by Abinash C. Bose; Publishers: Asia (1967)]
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