The Atharvaveda consists in its entirety of poetry and therefore, in the Kuru terminology, of Mantras. It survives in two schools. The earliest is the Paippalāda, called after its teacher Pippalāda whose name is derived from pippala, the sacred fig tree, Ficus religiosa. Some compositions of this school remind us of the Rigveda, but they are in linguistically younger forms, refer to the Kuru kings and their origins lie in the Kuru region. The second school, Śaunaka, arose a little later and further east in the land of the Pañcālas. It is less similar to the Rigveda. The composer-priests were Āgirasas and Bhārgavas, sometimes excluded from the ‘Three Vedas’ into which they were officially incorporated when the ‘Four Vedas’ were established. All of it combines to show that the Atharvaveda consists of early compositions that developed on their own and were incorporated in the edifice of the Three Vedas to turn it into Four.
We shall see in the next chapter that the main varieties of Vedic ritual are the gṛhya ‘domestic’ ritual and the śrauta ritual which is less easy to explain. The Atharvaveda consists chiefly of sorcery invocations (black and white magic), speculative or mystical poetry, fragments of gṛhya ‘domestic’ and royal ritual, as well as more specific compositions such as those that are linked to the arts of healing. It was originally excluded from the śrauta ritual.
I shall not be able to do full justice to the Atharvaveda, which continues to be a specialized subject within Vedic studies. It illustrates an attractive feature of these studies that deserves to be known by anyone interested in the study of human civilization: it is still possible to make important fresh discoveries in the field of Vedic traditions and open up new avenues of inquiry.
In 1957, Durgamohan Bhattacharyya made an ‘Announcement of a Rare Find’: the discovery among Orissa brahmans of palm-leaf manuscripts of the Paippalāda recension of the Atharvaveda of which parts had been available only in a single and notoriously corrupt manuscript from Kashmir. These were spectacular finds and it took the few people, who were able to make use of them, much time and work to make them accessible to the outside world. Durgamohan published one large volume in 1970 and his son Dipak Bhattacharya another in 1997. In the mean time, others went to Orissa in search of more. They include C.G. Kashikar of Poona, Michael Witzel of Harvard and Arlo Griffiths of Leiden.
Here is Griffith’s translation, done together with Alexander Lubotsky, of a poem that illustrates the importance of the Atharvaveda for the study of Indian medicine (Paippalāda Saṃhitā 4: 15). It deals with the healing of an open fracture with the help of a plant. The translation is literal and supplies within square brackets additional clarifications:
- Let marrow be put together with marrow, and your joint together with joint, together what of your flesh has fallen apart, together sinew and together your bone.
- Let marrow come together with marrow, let bone grow over [together] with bone. We put together your sinew with sinew, let skin grow with skin.
- Let hair be put together with hair. [The Rohiṇī-plant] shall fit together skin with skin. Let your blood grow with blood; let flesh grow with flesh.
- Grower [are you], healer, grower of the broken bone. You are born on the Rohiṇī-day, you are grower, o plant.
- If broken, if inflamed is your own bone, your flesh, Dhātar shall fix it whole, he shall put together joint with joint.
- If a thunderbolt that has been hurled has hit you, or if there is an injury due to falling into a well (?), or one that is there [due to falling] from a tree: the ten-headed one shall remove [it]. I put together your joint as Ṛbhu [the parts] of a chariot.
- Stand up, go forth, your joint has been put together. Let Dhātar put together the injury of your body. Be steady in this way, as a chariot goes with good wheels, with good felloes, with good axle-holes, with good naves.
Many references call for a further explanation. Rohiṇī, a red cow, is also a plant and the name of the Rauhiṇa day of the lunar calendar. Dhātar, the arranger, is a creator, not in the monotheistic sense but one of several architects or fashioners of the universe or some of its regions, similar to the demiurge of the ancient Greeks. The Ṛbhus are a group of divinities and Ṛbhu is a builder of chariots, patron deity of the Rathakāra of Chapter 3. One question about this poem is to what extent its recitation may have been accompanied by actual surgery—a question that touches the heart of Vedic studies: to what extent are mantras, that often accompany activity, meant to replace it?
A different hymn (Paippalāda Saṃhitā 6: 14) is directed at various noxious creatures and is replete with even more unsolved puzzles. Yet, or precisely because of them, it is worth quoting. Here it is, as translated by Griffiths in his forthcoming edition, uncertainties and all:
- The one with a large neck, born from dung, the one which is not a proper offering, eating bowel-contents—and the koka-faced Lip (?): these we cause to vanish from here.
- The dark-toothed Splitter, the snake-nosed Striker, the Approacher (?) balāhaka, the khela that brays like an ass, the vulture that moves like an elephant: these do we cause to vanish from here.
- The Grabber that eats what must be groped for, the Groper with a horrible hand, the Shuddering-eyed One with soft fingers, the Nail-strong One with force in the teeth: these do we cause to vanish from here.
- The constantly approaching …, the phantom that tries to win (food); and also the slimy one with quills: these do we cause to vanish from here.
- The Beater with a snout in front—the aliṃśa and the vatsapa; the Slipping one whose knot is as [tight as] that of a cord—the one belonging to the jungle, and the one belonging to armas: these do we cause to vanish from here.
- The knee-hairy Asurian demon that roams here, that seeks out the absent-minded one; the Arāyas that are …, that are …, and on the hair, the ones that are Śvakiṣkin: these do we cause to vanish from here.
- The Asurian fiend who eats a man’s young boys, the hairy, dreadful Arāya who slays and eats men: him do we cause to vanish from here.
- The one of the Arāyas, called Vein-eyed, who is in the house, killing where the sun does not reach: him do we cause to vanish from here.
- The chewing, robbing Vitūla, and the ever climbing (?) Forest-Shriek(er); the eater of raw [flesh], that seeks out the absent-minded [person]; the one running around, wet all over; the deep howling of a wolf: these do we cause to vanish from here.
The unexpected discovery of these Paippalāda hymns focused attention on another surprising fact: manuscripts written in the Oriya script had hardly ever been used in Vedic Studies before. That has not been true with respect to other Indic so-called ‘vernacular’ scripts. Many important Vedic manuscripts from South India, written in Grantha or Malayalam, have been known for almost two centuries.
The Atharvaveda provides much information on ritual, especially domestic. Connections with the Śrauta ritual, from which it was originally excluded, are less firm. Speculations on ritual and ritual interpretations remind us of the Brāhmaṇas, but they occur in verse form. The Atharvaveda knows rig, sāman and yajus, the latter in a form that seems closest to the Taittirīya Yajurveda. It evinces wide knowledge of the Sāmaveda and some of its technicalities. There is specific information on how to chant stutis. The principal composers of the Atharvaveda were closely related to chanters of sāmans as Stanley Insler has shown. Perhaps some precursors of Atharvavedins knew a form of Sāmaveda that was not yet entirely pervaded by the language of the Rigveda.
There is one topic left that may belong to the realm of the Atharvaveda though it is only known from post-Vedic sources.