Based on papers from the Third International Vedic Workshop, held in Leiden in 2002, this volume explores the texts, language and ritual of the The Vedas - one of the oldest elaborate corpuses of texts in any human language. The research presented not only shares a common subject area viz. Vedic texts and the language and ritual reflected in these, but also in acceptance of the importance of the philological method in dealing with these texts, where possible supplemented by what is now known as "Vedic fieldwork" - the study of Vedic rituals in South Asia who continue and renew the ritual tradition in which they were born.