Hindu shelf · Shruti · Veda 4 of 4
Atharvavedaअथर्ववेद · The Hymns of the Atharva-Veda
The fourth Veda: 731 hymns in twenty books, with charms for healing and protection, prayers for home, harvest and kingship, hymns on the creation of the world, and the funeral and wedding hymns. Each hymn is shown with the Sanskrit beside Ralph T. H. Griffith’s English translation of 1895–96.
Public domain. Griffith’s translation was published in 1895–96; Griffith died in 1906. The Sanskrit is the Śaunaka recension of the ancient text. 720 of the 724 hymns in the transcription have the Sanskrit beside them.
The twenty books
How to read these pages
- References are Book.Hymn.Verse in Griffith’s numbering, for example 12.1.12 = Book 12, Hymn 1, verse 12 (the Hymn to the Earth).
- Griffith follows the hymn divisions of Roth and Whitney’s edition. The Sanskrit here follows Shankar Pandurang Pandit’s edition, which splits some long hymns into several sūktas, mostly in Books 7–13. Where the numbers differ, each hymn names its Sanskrit sūktas. The pairing was checked by the opening verses and the verse counts.
- Griffith printed Book 2, Hymns 20–23 only as a note, because they repeat Hymn 19 with other gods named. Three hymns (4.2, 6.7 and 7.3) are missing from the online transcription; their pages link to the scan of Griffith’s printed volume.
- Books 15 and 16 are mostly prose, and much of Book 20 repeats hymns of the Rigveda.
- Griffith left a few passages untranslated or in Latin, as was usual in 1895; they are kept as printed.
Layers of this Veda
- Upanishads: Muṇḍaka and Praśna, in F. Max Müller’s translation, on the Upanishads page.
