Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c10.31

c10.31

The Atharvaveda. The Atharvaveda, indeed, contains much new and original matter not to be found in the Rigveda. Of about 6,000 stanzas making up 731 hymns divided into twenty books, some 1,200 are derived from the Rigveda, chiefly from its first, eighth, and tenth Books, and only a few from the other Books. A large part of this Vedic Saṁhitā refers to and mentions appropriate herbs as remedies against diseases like fever, leprosy, jaundice, dropsy, scrofula, cough, ophthalmia, baldness, impotence, and surgical ailments like fractures and wounds, bite of snakes and other injurious insects, and against poison in general, mania, and other complaints. The Atharvaveda is somewhat ungenerous in wishing away some of the ills of life like fever to distant regions and peoples such as the Mūjavans, the Bahlikas or a Śūdra girl whom it is asked to shake—fever, which is "now cold, now burning hot", which "makest all men yellow", with its "brother, consumption, and sister, cough, and nephew, herpes" [v, 22]. The Atharvaveda thus ranks as the oldest work of Indian Medicine. Its ninth book anticipates Astronomy by its mention of the lunar mansions. A part of it deals with domestic rites at birth, marriage, or death, thereby anticpating the later Gṛihya Sūtras. Along with spells for warding off evil, it also contains spells for securing good, such as harmony in family and village life, reconciliation of enemies, long life, health, prosperity, safety on journeys, and luck in gambling. There are, again, some hymns giving interesting data, economic [xii, 1], political [xi, 10; vii, 12 on Kings and Assemblies] and philosophical [e.g. iv, 16, exalting divine omniscience].