The first complete English translation in over a century of the Rigveda, the oldest Sanskrit text. Its thousand hymns, are crucial to the understanding of the Indo-Iranian oral tradition from which they emerged and the rich flowering of Indian religious and literary expressions that followed it.

VOLUME I ; Acknowledgements ; Introduction ; Mandala I ; Mandala II ; Mandala III ; Mandala IV ; VOLUME II ; Mandala V ; Mandala VI ; Mandala VII ; Mandala VIII ; VOLUME III ; Mandala IX ; Mandala X ; Bibliography ; Index of Hymns by Deity and Poet

"To translate the Rig Veda into English requires great patience and great scholarship. Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton have successfully achieved this mammoth task"--Swami Narasimhananda, Reading Religion "One might be expected to characterize in these pages a new, complete translation of the Rig Veda as 'precise,' 'careful,' 'philologically sound,' perhaps even 'illuminating' Brereton and Jamison's English RV is all of the above, as we would expect from these two scholars, but the adjectives that come first to mind are of a different order entirely: elegant, charming, surprising, generous, readable, accessible, and engaging. An elegant RV is almost an oxymoron; thus the achievement, in this case, is remarkable."-- David Shulman, Indo-Iranian Journal "Jamison (UCLA) and Brereton (Univ. of Texas, Austin) are to be commended for a translation that is both accurate and accessible to a wide audience... Essential." --CHOICE "A rich resource that can be read with pleasure from beginning to end; the introduction - in keeping with its subject - is full of matter and spirit... [splendid] volume of letters."--Norma Clarke, The Times Literary Supplement

Selling point: First complete English translation of the Rigveda in over a century Selling point: Focuses on the poetic techniques and structures of the hymns Selling point: Draws on over a century of investigations of both linguistic and religious features to give a dramatically different view of the text

Stephanie W. Jamison is Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures and of Indo-European Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published widely in Indo-European and Indo-Iranian linguistics, poetics, and mythology and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Oriental Society. Joel P. Brereton is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. He has taught in both Religious Studies and Asian Studies programs and has written on the literature and religion of the Veda, especially the Rigveda and the early Upanishads, and on Vedic ritual.

Selling point: First complete English translation of the Rigveda in over a century Selling point: Focuses on the poetic techniques and structures of the hymns Selling point: Draws on over a century of investigations of both linguistic and religious features to give a dramatically different view of the text