THE TEXT · ATHARVAVEDA
Hymns discussed in this article
Begin with the verses shown here. Open the other cited hymns to compare their images and aims.
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK VI IN FOCUS
To compel a woman's love
Nyastikā́ hast thou grown up, my good-fortune maker; a hundred [are] thy forth-stretchers, three and thirty thy down-stretchers. With this thousand-leafed [herb] I make dry thy heart.
Let thy heart dry up on me, then let [thy] mouth dry up; then dry thou up by loving me; then go thou about dry-mouthed.
A conciliator, a love-awakener (?), do thou, O brown, beauteous one, push together; push together both yon woman and me; make [our] heart the same.
As the mouth of one who has not drunk water dries away, so dry thou up by loving me, then go thou about dry-mouthed.
Read the remaining 1 verse of VI.139
As a mongoos, having cut apart, puts together again a snake, so, O powerful [herb], put together the divided of love.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read VI.139 at Wikisource ↗
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK VI ALSO CITED
To win a man's love
Read comparison hymn VI.130 (4 verses)
Of the Apsarases, chariot-conquering, belonging to the chariot-conquering, [is] this the love (smará): ye gods, send forth love; let yon [man] burn for (anu-çuc) me.
Let yon [man] love (smṛ) me; being dear, let him love me: ye gods, send etc. etc.
That yon [man] may love me, not I him at any time, ye gods, send etc. etc.
Craze (un-māday-) [him], O Maruts; O atmosphere, craze [him]; O Agni, do thou craze [him]; let yon [man] burn for me.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read VI.130 at Wikisource ↗
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK I ALSO CITED
A love-spell: with a sweet herb
Read comparison hymn I.34 (5 verses)
This plant is honey-(mádhu-)born; with honey we dig thee; forth from honey art thou engendered; ⌊so⌋ do thou make us possessed of honey.
At the tip of my tongue honey, at the root of my tongue honeyedness; mayest thou be altogether in my power (krátu), mayest thou come unto my intent (cittá).
Honeyed (mádhumant) [is] my in-stepping, honeyed my forth-going; with my voice I speak what is honeyed; may I be of honey-aspect.
Than honey am I sweeter (mádhu), than the honey-plant more honeyed; of me verily shalt thou be fond (? van), as of a honeyed branch.
About thee with an encompassing (paritatnú) sugar-cane have I gone, in order to absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read I.34 at Wikisource ↗
The plant charm makes lack physical
VI.139 begins with a many-leaved plant and a wish to dry a woman's heart. Verse 2 imagines her mouth drying through desire and verse 4 compares it to thirst. The bodily metaphor turns wanting into deprivation. Verse 3's call to bring the pair together may sound reciprocal, but the surrounding verses impose suffering on the targeted woman. The closing mongoose-and-snake comparison imagines divided lovers put together again; Whitney notes that the animal claim is not natural history. The sequence is more than a simple attraction image: it first manufactures need, then pictures reunion. A modern craving for attention has no direct equivalent in the hymn's specific bodily demands.
VI.130 sends desire without a conversation
VI.130 is voiced as a woman's petition for a man's love. Its refrain asks gods to dispatch love and make him burn for her, ending with Maruts, atmosphere, and Agni called to intensify the effect. Verse 3 even asks that he love her while she does not love him in return. That makes the desired attachment deliberately unequal. The man neither speaks nor gives attention in the printed verses; his burning is the speaker's projected result. Compared with VI.139's plant and dryness, VI.130 uses divine dispatch and heat. Both imagine another person's state being altered without that person's account, but they do so through different agents and poetic progressions.
Honey redirects the speaker's conduct
I.34 begins with a honey-associated plant and carries its sweetness to the speaker's tongue, voice, movement, and aspect. Its final line asks the beloved to love and not leave, and verse 2 wants the other person to follow the speaker's intent. It remains persuasive, yet its concrete transformation is initially on the speaker. Reading it beside VI.139 and VI.130 helps distinguish making oneself appealing from imagining the beloved physically starved or inflamed by longing. None of the hymns establishes that an actual person will seek the speaker's attention. Their value lies in showing how ancient desire could be voiced as social sweetness, bodily deprivation, or burning.
The Wanted Attention is modern
“Make a target person crave my attention” and The Wanted Attention were invented for this project. The exact benefit is a contemporary imaginative extension, not a source-based Atharvavedic result. Attention in a present-day relationship could mean listening, choosing time together, or seeking contact; the old poems do not specify those acts. Their coercive metaphors should not be recast as benign mutual interest. A person may find someone's company appealing without feeling the distress VI.139 demands or the one-sided heat VI.130 seeks. That difference gives the modern wish a boundary: the sources document historical rhetoric of influence, not evidence that a named person's inner life has been changed.
WORKED READING
Ask who becomes hungry for whom
Read VI.139.2's desire figured through a dry mouth, then VI.130.3's request that a man love more than the speaker loves him. The first makes the woman's lack bodily; the second names emotional imbalance directly. I.34.3 shifts attention to the speaker's own voice and appearance. These verses do not merely repeat a desire for attention. They distribute need and agency differently: a plant acts on a woman, gods act on a man, and honey acts through the speaker's presentation. The modern phrase “crave my attention” does not preserve those differences unless they are stated.