-VEDA A COLLECTION OF ANCIENT HINDU HYMNS, CONSTITUTING THE FIRST ASHTAKA, OR BOOK, B , OF THE RIG-V EDA; THE OLDEST AUTHORITY FOR THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE HINDUS. TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL SANSKRIT. By H. H. WILSON, M.A., F.R.S. Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, of the Asiatic Societies of Calcutta and Paris, and of the and Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford. Published under the patronage of the Court of Directors of the East-India Company. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: 1866. INTRODUCTION. a WHEN the liberal patronage of the Court of Directors of the East-India Company enabled Dr. Max Müller to undertake his invaluable edition of the Rig-Veda, a wish was expressed, that its appearance should be accompanied, or followed, with all convenient despatch, by an English translation. As I had long contemplated such a work, and had made some progress, in its execution, even before leaving India, I readily undertook to complete my labours and publish the translation. It might, else, have been thought scarcely necessary to repeat a translation of the first Ashtaka, Ogdoad, or Eighth book, of the Rig Veda ; as that had been, already, more than once accomplished; partly, in English, by the Rev. Mr. Stevenson and Dr. Roer, and fully, in Latin, by the late Dr. Rosen. A translation in French, also, by M. Langlois, extending through four Ashtakas, or half the Veda, has been recently published at Paris; but I was not aware, when I engaged to publish an English translation, that such a work had been commenced. At the same time, these translations do not seem to preclude, entirely, the usefulness of an English version. The earliest publication, |