Overview
The Atharvaveda (Sanskrit: अथर्ववेद) is one of the four Vedas of Hinduism, traditionally regarded as the fourth and a later addition to the Vedic corpus. Its name is derived from atharvan, meaning "priest", and veda, meaning "knowledge"; the text is often described as a storehouse of knowledge concerning the procedures of everyday life. The language of the Atharvaveda differs from Rigvedic Sanskrit and preserves certain pre-Vedic Indo-European archaisms.
The text comprises around 730 hymns containing about 6,000 mantras, arranged in 20 books. Roughly a sixth of its content adapts verses from the Rigveda, and apart from Books 15 and 16, the work is largely in verse, employing a variety of Vedic metres. Two recensions have survived into modern times: the Paippalāda and the Śaunakīya. Reliable manuscripts of the Paippalāda recension were long believed to have been lost, but a well-preserved version was discovered among palm-leaf manuscripts in Odisha in 1957.
The Atharvaveda is sometimes referred to as the "Veda of magical formulas", though several scholars consider this characterisation inadequate. In contrast to the more hieratic orientation of the other three Vedas, the Atharvaveda is often described as reflecting a more popular religious tradition. Alongside formulaic and protective hymns, it contains rituals associated with initiation into learning (upanayana), marriage and funerals, as well as royal rituals and the duties of court priests. Scholars generally place its compilation as a Veda contemporaneously with the Samaveda and Yajurveda, broadly in the period around 1200 BCE – 1000 BCE.
Like the other Vedas, the Atharvaveda has multiple textual layers. In addition to its Samhita, it includes a Brahmana and a concluding layer devoted to philosophical speculation. This later layer contains three principal Upanishads associated with the Atharvaveda — the Mundaka Upanishad, the Mandukya Upanishad and the Prashna Upan