Jealousy, Envy, and Other Disruptive Emotions in the Atharvaveda

This essay examines the Atharvaveda’s representation of emotions as ritually actionable forces embedded in conceptions of illness, healing, and social relations. Drawing on approaches from medical anthropology and the history of emotions, it explores how emotions such as jealousy, envy, and harmony are culturally codified and ritually managed as factors affecting both individual well-being and collective stability. By analysing a range of healing, protective, and restorative practices, the essay shows how emotional disturbances are understood alongside bodily afflictions and other forms of disorder, and how they are transformed into matters of communal concern through ritual intervention. It argues that the Atharvaveda presents a model of emotional regulation in which affective life, healing, and ritual efficacy are inseparable from social cohesion and a relational understanding of personhood, offering new insights into the emotional grammar encoded in the text.