Granting wealth lavishly, the kindly goddess
Shall goods abundantly bestow upon us.
The four hymns of Book XIII. are devoted to the praise of Rohita, the “Red” Sun, as a cosmogonic power. In another (xi. 5) the sun is glorified as a primeval principle under the guise of a Brahman disciple (brahmachārin). In others Prāṇa or Breath (xi. 4), Kāma or Love (ix. 2), and Kāla or Time (xix. 53–54), are personified as primordial powers. There is one hymn (xi. 7) in which even Ucchishṭa (the remnant of the sacrifice) is deified as the Supreme Being; except for its metrical form it belongs to the Brāhmaṇa type of literature.
In concluding this survey of the Atharva-veda, I would draw attention to a hymn to Varuṇa (iv. 16); which, though its last two stanzas are ordinary Atharvan spells for binding enemies with the fetters of that deity, in its remaining verses exalts divine omniscience in a strain unequalled in any other Vedic poem. The following three stanzas are perhaps the best:—
This earth is all King Varuṇa’s dominion,
And that broad sky whose boundaries are distant.
The loins of Varuṇa are these two oceans,
Yet in this drop of water he is hidden.
He that should flee afar beyond the heaven
Would not escape King Varuṇa’s attention: