Atharva Veda · 543 of 724

HYMN XXXIV

A protective charm addressed to the panacea called A Jangida 1. Jangida, thou art Angiras: thou art a guardian, Jangida. Let Jangida, keep safely all our bipeds and our quadrupeds. 2. Dice-witcheries, the fifty-threes, the hundred witchcraft-practi- sers, All these may Jangida make weak, bereft of their effectual force. 3. Baffle the loud factitious howl, make impotent the seven decays. As when an archer speeds the shaft, drive away want, O Jangida, 4. This counteracts the sorceress, this banishes malignity: Then may victorious Jangida’s prolong the days we have to live. 5. Let Jangida’s protecting might encompass us on every side. Wherewith he quells Vishkandha and Sanskandha, might by greater might. 6. Three times the Gods engendered thee fixt on the surface of the earth; The Brāhmans of the olden time knew that thy name was Angiras; 7. The ancient plants surpass thee not, nor any herbs of recent days. A potent charm is Jangida, a most felicitous defence. 8. Then when thou sprangest into life, Jangida of un-measured strength, Indra, O mighty One, bestowed great power upon thee from the first. 9. To thee in truth, O Forest Tree, Indra the mighty One gave strength. Driving away all maladies, strike thou the demons down, O Plant. 10. Lumbago and rheumatic pain, consumptive cough, and pleurisy, And fever which each Autumn brings, may Jangida make- powerless.

Context

Hymn XXXV is the second jangida-amulet hymn in Book XIX, following the longer XIX.34. The two hymns together are the Atharvaveda’s longest sustained celebration of a single curative herb. Maurice Bloomfield’s identification of the jangida with a specific plant is uncertain (possibly Withania somnifera, now sold in 2026 as ashwagandha, possibly a different Solanaceous plant); the ritual prominence of the herb is clear regardless. By the time of Sushruta and Charaka (the foundational Ayurvedic medical texts of the early common era), the jangida has largely faded from the medical literature, supplanted by more systematically classified herbs. The Atharvan hymns preserve a pre-systematic phase of Indian herbal religion in which one specific plant carried disproportionate ritual weight.