The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c9.13

v1.c9.13

Full as are the other Saṁhitās of magic rites, the Atharvaveda³ differs from them in the fact that, whereas they are essentially connected with the sacrifice, its connexion with that operation is external and mechanical. In essence it is a collection of spells for every conceivable end of human life, spells to secure success of every kind, in the assembly, in public life, to restore an exiled king, to procure health and offspring, to defeat rivals in love, to drive away diseases in every form, to win wealth and so on. But at the same time the subject-matter has been thoroughly worked over by the priesthood, and it has even in its simplest spells throughout a priestly veneer. The priests have also added many spells directly bearing on portions of their sacrificial activities, and the wedding and burial hymns appear in more elaborate forms. Theosophy *qua* profit-bringing⁴ is not absent, and a deliberate attempt was later made to bring the Atharvaveda into the circle of the three orthodox Vedas by the addition to the collection of book xx which contains the hymns to be used by the Brāhmaṇācchaṅsin priest in the ritual of the Soma sacrifice. It is, however, important to note that this Veda, despite the attempts made to raise it to an equal place with the others, never succeeded in achieving this position: useful as were its spells, and much as the priests of the school of the Atharvaveda thrust themselves forward as indispensable to princes through their magic powers, there were always not lacking voices to criticize its claim to be a fourth legitimate Veda.⁵ In modern times this prejudice and recognition of the special character of the work are reflected in the suggestion that the text is actually the product of strata of society different from those of the Rigveda: Ridgeway⁶ insists that the Atharvaveda is the record of aboriginal as opposed to Aryan religion. This view, however, cannot be pressed too far: the Atharvaveda reflects the practices of the lower side of religious life, and is closer to the common people than the highly hieratic atmosphere of much of the Rigveda: the common people, we cannot doubt, were largely influenced by aboriginal ideas through mixture with aboriginal races, but, as will be seen below, we have no criterion on which we can safely rely to decide that certain beliefs are non-Aryan and aboriginal. The same problem in effect presents itself as in the case of the Homeric poems. Are we to suppose that they represent Aryan religion, and that that religion was free from admixture with the lower side of religion, which is freely revealed in the later literature of Greece and foreshadowed by the evidence of Aegean cult objects? The answer to that question given by Lang¹ in the affirmative seems most improbable, though not more so than the suggestion of Gilbert Murray² that the Homeric poems are the result of a process of conscious refining of older tradition. Like the Homeric poems the Rigveda does not cover the whole field of religious belief, and we have no sure ground on which to assign to the non-Aryan as opposed to the other elements in the population all the lower forms of religion.