THE

FIRST ASHTAKA, OR BOOK,

OF THE

RIG-VEDA,

fc. &c.

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
Oriental Society of Germany; Foreign Member of the National Institute of France;
Member of the Imperial Academies of Petersburgh and Vienna, and of the Royal
Academies of Münich and Berlin; Ph.D. Breslau; M.D. Marburg, &c.,
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:

N. TRÜBNER AND CO.,

60, PATERNOSTER ROW.

1866.

BIBLIOTHECA

REGIA
MONACENSIS.

HERTFORD: PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN.

INTRODUCTION.

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,