Human concerns
What people asked for
What human concerns does the Atharvaveda address, and how do the other three compare?
The Atharvaveda is the collection that talks about ordinary life: a fever, a rival, a difficult birth, a new house, cattle that should thrive. Reading what it addresses means keeping two things apart that a ranked list would merge — the things people suffered, and the things they believed were doing it to them.
The registry types every condition as an affliction, a threat, or a named cause, and the three are never counted together here. An earlier version of this question did merge them and returned demons, sorcery and worms at the top of a list of illnesses. That is why the two panels below have two headings and two scales, and why nothing on this page offers to combine them.
What is suffered, and what is guarded against
26 afflictions and 7 threats are recorded in this build. They are drawn side by side and never on the same axis: the left panel is what is suffered, the right is what the verses guard against.
Afflictions
A condition suffered in the body or the household. Counted across all four collections.
| Affliction | Bar | Verses |
|---|---|---|
| consumption (yakṣma)named in 4 of 4 collections | 89 | |
| fever (takman)named in 1 of 4 collections | 33 | |
| affliction (amīvā)named in 4 of 4 collections | 32 | |
| evil dream (duṣvapnya)named in 2 of 4 collections | 22 | |
| hereditary disease (kṣetriya)named in 1 of 4 collections | 22 | |
| bodily hurt (rapas)named in 3 of 4 collections | 18 | |
| seizure (grāhi)named in 2 of 4 collections | 15 | |
| balasa (balāsa)named in 1 of 4 collections | 12 | |
| viskandha (viṣkandha)named in 1 of 4 collections | 11 | |
| apacit swellings (apacit)named in 1 of 4 collections | 7 | |
| cough (kāsa)named in 1 of 4 collections | 7 | |
| jaundice (hariman)named in 2 of 4 collections | 6 |
Threats
A hostile agent the texts guard against. Not a disease. Counted from the protection edges.
| Threat | Bar | Verses |
|---|---|---|
| demon (rakṣas)guarded against | 160 | |
| witchcraft (kṛtyā)guarded against | 65 | |
| the malevolent (durhārd)guarded against | 26 | |
| imprecation (abhiśasti)guarded against | 18 | |
| ill-named beings (durṇāman)guarded against | 17 | |
| malignant sprite (arāya)guarded against | 14 | |
| curse (śapatha)guarded against | 12 |
A third kind sits between them: poison (viṣa), worms (krimi) — named by the texts as a cause. Named by the texts as a cause. Not a modern pathogen.
Both panels count verses in which a registered Sanskrit alias occurs. These are lexical minima — the true figures are higher, because the registry does not carry every alias — and they are never diagnoses.
Who asks for what
The seven recorded human concerns and the five social rites, each across all four collections, at the rate per 1,000 verses of the collection. This is the form in which the Atharvaveda's distinctiveness is visible without the size difference doing the work.
overcoming rivals (sapatna)
101 verses across the corpus. A human concern.
| RVRigveda | 0.57 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 0.54 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 3.54 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 14.9 per 1,000 |
thriving (puṣṭi)
94 verses across the corpus. A human concern.
| RVRigveda | 3.13 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 1.08 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 6.08 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 8.05 per 1,000 |
splendour (varcas)
76 verses across the corpus. A human concern.
| RVRigveda | 0.66 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | 0.54 per 1,000 | |
| YVYajurveda | 7.09 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 9.25 per 1,000 |
length of life (dīrghāyutva)
20 verses across the corpus. A human concern.
| RVRigveda | 0.38 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | no match | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 2.74 per 1,000 |
freedom from debt (ṛṇa)
18 verses across the corpus. A human concern.
| RVRigveda | 0.76 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | 0.51 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 1.54 per 1,000 |
defence (paripāṇa)
11 verses across the corpus. A human concern.
| RVRigveda | no match | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | no match | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 1.88 per 1,000 |
concord (saṃjñāna)
6 verses across the corpus. A human concern.
| RVRigveda | 0.09 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | no match | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 0.86 per 1,000 |
marriage (vivāha)
41 verses across the corpus. A social rite.
| RVRigveda | 1.52 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | no match | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 4.28 per 1,000 |
house building (śālā)
30 verses across the corpus. A social rite.
| RVRigveda | no match | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | no match | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 5.14 per 1,000 |
childbirth (sūṣā)
15 verses across the corpus. A social rite.
| RVRigveda | 0.09 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | 1.52 per 1,000 | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 1.88 per 1,000 |
assembly (sabhā)
14 verses across the corpus. A social rite.
| RVRigveda | 0.19 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | no match | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 2.06 per 1,000 |
funerary rites (pitṛyāṇa)
10 verses across the corpus. A social rite.
| RVRigveda | 0.09 per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| SVSamaveda | no match | |
| YVYajurveda | no match | |
| AVAtharvaveda | 1.54 per 1,000 |
The mention layer reaches all four collections, so a collection with no figure here genuinely had no match rather than having no layer. One row is worth the caution: the Atharvaveda’s marriage hymn redacts a Rigvedic one, so the Rigvedic share of marriage vocabulary is real rather than noise.
What the figures show
12 of the 12 concerns and social rites in this registry occur at a higher rate in the Atharvaveda than in the Rigveda, and 2 of them — defence (paripāṇa), house building (śālā) — was matched in no other collection at all. The afflictions behave the same way: consumption (yakṣma) is named at about 10 times the Rigvedic rate.
One way to read it
The rates suggest a collection organised around what a household needs rather than around the sacrifice, which is close to how the Atharvaveda is usually described. What these counts cannot tell you is whether that reflects the lives of its reciters or the editorial purpose of the collection, and those are different claims.
How to read this plate
- What is measured
- Verses in which a registered Sanskrit alias for a condition, concern or rite occurs, counted per collection and normalised per 1,000 verses of that collection.
- What one mark is
- One bar is one condition's rate in one collection. The colour and the heading say which of the three kinds of condition it is: an affliction, a threat, or a named cause.
- What is in scope
- All four collections. The mention layer reaches all four, so a collection with no figure for a row genuinely had no match.
- What is excluded
- Anything the registry has no alias for. These are lexical minima and the true figures are higher.
- What this does not show
- A diagnosis. `yaksma` is a Sanskrit word for a wasting illness, not a identification of a disease, and nothing here maps a Vedic condition onto a modern one.
Reads Condition registry, human-concern registry, lexical mention layer, protection and treatment edges