for, as Adalbert Kuhn has shown, some of its spells for curing bodily ailments agree in purpose and content, as well as to some extent even in form, with certain old German, Lettic, and Russian charms. But with regard to the higher religious ideas relating to the gods, it represents a more recent and advanced stage than the Rigveda. It contains, indeed, more theosophic matter than any of the other Saṃhitās. For the history of civilisation it is on the whole more interesting and important than the Rigveda itself.
The Atharva-veda is extant in the recensions of two different schools. That of the Paippalādas is, however, known in a single birch-bark manuscript, which is ancient but inaccurate and mostly unaccented. It was discovered by Professor Bühler in Kashmir, and has been described by Professor Roth in his tract Der Atharvaveda in Kaschmir (1875). It will probably soon be accessible to scholars in the form of a photographic reproduction published by Professor Bloomfield. This recension is doubtless meant by the "Paippalāda Mantras" mentioned in one of the Pariçishṭas or supplementary writings of the Atharva-veda.
The printed text, edited by Roth and Whitney in 1856, gives the recension of the Çaunaka school. Nearly the whole of Sāyaṇa's commentary to the Atharva-veda has been edited in India. Its chief interest lies in the large number of readings supplied by it which differ from those of the printed edition of this Veda.
This Saṃhitā is divided into twenty books, containing 730 hymns and about 6000 stanzas. Some 1200 of the latter are derived from the Rigveda, chiefly from the tenth, first, and eighth books, a few also from each of the other books. Of the 143 hymns of Book XX.,
