Atharva Veda · 1 of 724

BOOK I

HYMN I A prayer to Vāchaspati for divine illumination and help. 1. Now may Vāchaspati assign to me the strength and powers of Those Who, wearing every shape and form, the triple seven, are wandering round. 2. Come thou again, Vāchaspati, come with divine intelligence. Vasoshpati, repose thou here. In me be Knowledge, yea, in me. 3. Here, even here, spread sheltering arms like the two bow-ends strained with cord. This let Vāchaspati confirm. In me be Knowledge, yea, in me. 4. Vāchaspati hath been invoked: may he invite us in reply. May we adhere to Sacred Lore. Never may I be reft thereof.

Context

You are opening the Atharva-Veda, the fourth and youngest of the four Vedic collections. Its sister Vedas (the Rig, the Sama, the Yajur) handle the great public sacrifice; the Atharva handles everything else. Charms for fever and snake-bite, love-spells, counter-witchcraft, king-makings, blessings on a new house, on a new field, on a newborn child. The Atharvan was the household priest, the village healer, the man you called when your wife was in labor or your cattle were sick. For about a thousand years the orthodox Brahmanical schools refused to count him as fully canonical, speaking of the trayī vidyā, the threefold knowledge, and leaving him out. Manu (XI.33-34) accepts him; Apastamba is more guarded. By the Brahmana period the fourfold canon becomes standard. What you have here is the unguarded record of what people actually believed and did at the village level around 1000-800 BCE.