The Ancillary Literature of the Atharva-Veda

The present work seeks to focus attention on the richness and variety of the Atharvanic literature. It undertakes to give at one place a comprehensive and connected account of the profuse ancillary literature belonging to the Atharva-Veda. This book also aims at bringing to the foreground the vast and important but mostly neglected literature in the Vedic field, namely, the Atharva-Veda Parisistas. The Atharvaveda Parisistas deal with a number of subjects like the lore of constellations, royal ceremonies, rituals, religious observances, magic, philology, omens and portents, etc. The present study is divided into two parts. The first part describes in brief the nature and contents of the Atharva-Veda Samhita and then takes up the ancillary texts, other than the Parisistas. The second part deals exclusively and exhaustively with the Atharva-Veda Parisistas. All the Parisistas have been studied in detail and their contents have been critically and systematically restated. Some general questions such as those relating to the date, the style, etc. of the Parisistas have also been discussed. The study concludes with an index of the Atharva-Veda mantras referred to in the Gopatha Brahmana, the Kausika Sutra, the Vaitana Sutra, the Parisistas and other Vedic texts.