The Hymns of the Atharvaveda

HYMN I A prayer to Vāchaspati for divine illumination and help. Now may Vāchaspati assign to me the strength and powers of Those Who, wearing every shape and form, the triple seven, are wandering round. Come thou again, Vāchaspati, come with divine intelligence. Vasoshpati, repose thou here. In me be Knowledge, yea, in me. 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. Vāchaspati hath been invoked: may he invite us in reply. May we adhere to Sacred Lore. Never may I be reft thereof. HYMN II A charm against dysentery We know the father of the shaft, Parjanya, liberal nourisher, Know well his mother: Prithivī, Earth with her manifold designs. Do thou, O Bowstring, bend thyself around us: make my body stone. Firm in thy strength drive far away malignities and hateful things. When, closely clinging round the wood, the bowstring sings triumph to the swift and whizzing arrow, Indra, ward off from us the shaft, the missile. As in its flight the arrow’s point hangs between earth and firmament, So stand this Munja grass between ailment and dysenteric ill!