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HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
impure, that the practice entails promiscuous, unaristocratic mingling with men : 'men run to the physician' (MS. IV, 6, 2, p. 80, l. 1)? And we may trust that the canons of social standing and literary appreciation of a people that had produced the best that is to be found in Vedic literature could not fail altogether, when in the proper mood, to estimate at its right value the wretched hocus-pocus of the bheshagani themselves, though these were the best that the Vedic period had produced for the relief of bodily ailment. Yet the Veda without witchcraft would not be the Veda, and the srauta-texts are not in the position to throw stones against the Atharvan. Moreover it must not be forgotten that the Atharvan contains in its cosmogonic and theosophic sections more material that undertakes to present the highest brahmavidyâ than any other Vedic Samhità (cf. below, p. lxvi); by whatever literary evolution this was associated with this sphere of literature and incorporated into the redaction, it doubtless contributed to the floating of the more compact body of sorcery-charms, and its higher valuation among the more enlightened of the people. At any rate, a sober survey of the position of the Atharvan in the traividya yields the result that this Veda, while not within the proper sphere of the greater concerns of Vedic religious lise, is considered within its own sphere as a Veda in perfectly good standing; the question of its relative importance, its authority, and its canonicity is not discussed, nor even suggested.
The position of the Atharvan in the Upanishads does not appear to differ from that in the sruti in general. Aside
The AV in from the Atharvan Upanishads, which are the Upani- naturally somewhat freer in their reference
shads to the AV., and in the mention of more or less apocryphal Atharvan teachers, it is introduced but rarely, and usually in the manner prevalent elsewhere in the srauta-literature, i.e. preceded by the trayî, and
'CE. the contempt for the pügayagfiyah, ye pûgân yagayanti, 'those who sacrifice for a crowd,' Manu III, 151; Mahabh. I, 3883, and the grå mayâgin, Manu IV, 205, and gråmayágaka, Mabábh. III, 13355. See also Vishnu LXXXII, 12; Gaut. XV, 16.
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