Spells, Healing, and the Fourth Veda

The Atharva Veda stands somewhat apart from the other three. Named for the atharvan, a class of priest, it is a collection not primarily of sacrificial liturgy but of charms, spells and incantations for the concerns of everyday life, healing sickness, ensuring long life, winning love, securing success, cursing enemies, blessing a house or a field, easing childbirth. Alongside this magico-medical material it also contains some of the most speculative and philosophical hymns in Vedic literature.

For this reason it was, for a long time, not universally accepted as a Veda at all: the older formula spoke of the "three Vedas" (trayi vidya), and the Atharva's canonical standing was contested and came later. Its great value to historians is precisely its subject matter: where the Rig, Sama and Yajur Vedas show the high public sacrifice of the priestly elite, the Atharva Veda opens a window onto the popular religion, domestic anxieties and folk medicine of early Vedic society. It, too, is finally counted as shruti, the fourth Veda.