A COLLECTION OF ANCIENT HINDU HYMNS, CONSTITUTING THE SECOND ASHTAKA, OR BOOK, OF THE RIG-VEDA; 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. LONDON: WM. H. ALLEN AND CO., 7, LEADENHALL STREET. 1854. INTRODUCTION. THE publication of the text of the second division of the Rig-Veda by Professor Müller, affords safe authority for the continuance of the translation, which is therefore now offered to the public, under the same liberal patronage of the Court of Directors of the East-India Company under which the preceding volume appeared, and without which it would probably have been withheld from the press: little interest in the work having been manifested in this country, however indispensable the Vedas may be to an accurate knowledge of the religious opinions of the ancient world, and of the primæval institutions of the Hindus. The view which has been taken in the introduction to the former volume, of the religion and mythology of the people of India, and of their social condition, fifteen centuries at the least prior to Christianity, as derivable from the Veda, is confirmed by the further particulars furnished in the present volume. The worship is that of fire and the elements: it is patriarchal and domestic, but is celebrated through the agency of a rather imposing body of priests, although it consists of little more |