Rig Veda Samhita

Rig-Veda, as Professor Max Muller rightly said “is the Veda par excellence, containing the real theogony of the Hindus and is the oldest authority on the religious and Social Institutions of the Hindus”.

It may be almost superfluous to apprise the reader that the oldest, and, nominally the weightiest authority of the Hindus, for their religion and institutions, are the Vedas of which the Rig-Veda is the supreme.

The Rig-Veda Samhita, the complete English translation of which is being laid before the public, is divided into eight Ashtakas and more than a thousand Suktas in number. It has been the learned translator’s aim to adhere as strictly to the original Sanskrit text as the necessity of being intelligible would allow, to translate more than ten thousand stanzas of the whole work.

It has been a gigantic task which Professor Wilson undertook and in which two other great scholars of Indology, Prof. C. B. Cowell and W. F. Webaster contributed to help complete the work which is a gem in the Indological literature. With a profound feeling of gratification, the publishers make available this entire print of Rig-Veda Samhita in seven volumes to the Indologists, Sanskrit Scholars and the Institutions and hope that this will be a welcome addition to their collection.