People of the sun Royalty, asceticism and solar metaphor in the Atharva-Veda Rohita hymns

Abstract

In the 1890s, when the first western interpreters took up the Rohita verses of the Atharva-Veda (AV) the study of the AV tradition was still very much in its infancy. The editio princeps of the Śaunaka Saṃhitā (ŚS) had been published in 1856, followed by a series of partial translations, yet the complete and nearly complete translations that shaped early western impressions of the text were still to come. Most of the translations that existed by the 1890s, such as those of Aufrecht (1850), Weber (1858, 1862, 1873, 1884) and Grill (1879), overlooked the cryptic Rohita kāṇḍa (ŚS 13). While Muir (1872) and Scherman (1887) had translated shorter extracts in the service of broader studies, only Ludwig had, in 1878, attempted the first three Rohita sūktas. So the intense scholarly discussion that the ŚS Rohita kāṇḍa inspired around the turn of the century stands out to me as an anomaly, especially as these verses have scarcely been taken up since.