This is the Ralph T.H. Griffith translation of the Atharvaveda. The Atharvaveda is a Vedic-era collection of spells, prayers, charms, and hymns. The Atharva-veda is a comparatively late addition to the three ancient Vedas the Rik, Yajus and Saman the Vedas repectively of recited praise, sacrifice and song or chanted hymn-which formed the foundation of early religious belief and worship of the Hindus. Unlike these three Vedas the Atharva-Veda derives the name by which it is generally known not form the nature of its contents but from a personage of indefinitely remote antiquity named Atharvan.

Ralph Thomas Hotchkin Griffith (1826-1906) was an English Indologist, a member of the Indian education service and among the first Europeans to translate the Vedas into English. He lived in the UK (Oxford) and in India (Benares and Nilgiris). Griffith was born at Corsley, Wiltshire, on 25 May 1826. The son of the Reverend R. C. Griffith (Chaplain to the Marquess of Bath 1830), he was a B.A. of Queen's College and was elected Boden Professor of Sanskrit on Nov 24, 1849. He translated the Vedic scriptures into English. He also produced translations of other Sanskrit literature, including a verse version of the Ramayana and the Kumara Sambhava of Kalidasa. He held the position of principal at the Benares College in India and later lived in Kotagiri, Nilgiri. Griffith was more interested in translating Vedic books into English, and did most of his translations while living, teaching and researching in Kotagiri in the Nilgiris. At Kotagiri he tranquilly engaged in the study and translation of the Vedas. He died on 7 November 1906, and was buried there.

THE Atharva-veda is a comparatively late addition to the three ancient Vedas, the Rik, Yajus, and Saman- the Vedas respectively of recited praise, sacrifice, and song or chanted hymn-which formed the foundation of the early religious belief and worship of the Hindus. Unlike these three Vedas, the Atharva-veda derives the name by which it is generally known, not from the nature of its contents but from a personage of indefinite- ly remote antiquity named Atharvan, who is spoken of in the Rigveda as the first priest who rubbed Agni forth' or produced fire by attrition, who first by sacrifices made the paths' or established ways of com- munication between men and Gods, and overcame hostile demons by means of the miraculous powers which he had received from heaven. To the descend- ants of this Atharvan, associated with the Angirases and the Bhrigus, members of other ancient priestly families often mentioned in the Rigveda, the collected hymns-called also the Atharvângirasas and the Bhrig vangirasas, that is the Songs of the Atharvans and Angirases and the Songs of the Bhrigus and Angirases, and, in the Gopatha-Brahmana, the Atharvana-veda and the Angirasa-veda-were, it is said, originally revealed.