Rig -Veda - Sanhita : A Collection of Ancient Hindu Hymns of the Rig - Veda

The present edition of the Rig- Veda translation is merely a reprint of the first edition prined in 1850 and thereafter. The translation of the late Prof. Horace Heyman Wilson was the first English translation of the Rig-Veda. It has specialities of its own and these will keep its value for a long time. The Rigveda or Rig Veda is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (sūktas). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts (śruti) known as the Vedas. The Rigveda is the oldest known Vedic Sanskrit text. Its early layers are among the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language. The sounds and texts of the Rigveda have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE. Philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the bulk of the Rigveda Samhita was composed in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. The text is layered, consisting of the Samhita, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads. The Rigveda Samhita is the core text and is a collection of 10 books (maṇḍalas) with 1,028 hymns (sūktas) in about 10,600 verses (called ṛceponymous of the name Rigveda that were composed the earliest, the hymns predominantly discuss cosmology, rites, and rituals and praise deities. The more recent books (Books 1 and 6) in part also deal with philosophical or speculative questions, virtues such as dāna (charity) in society, questions about the origin of the universe and the nature of the divine, and other metaphysical issues in their hymns.