The native treatment of the hymn exhibits considerable divergence, owing to its duplex character. It is a hymn to lightning ; and, on the other hand, the diseases attributed to lightning present even more salient and practical points, destined to be prominent in its designation and ritual application. So the Anukrama^i describes it as a yaksh- mana^anaw suktam, 'a hymn which cures consumption' (cf. the word kasas ' from cough ' in st. 3) ; in the Ga^a- mala, Ath. Park 32, 7, it is one of the takmanlsanaga/za,
1 Note the words stana^ and stanayitniir respectively, in VII, 10 and VII, n, as the probable, and even more inane reason for the juxtaposition of the two hymns in the redaction.
248 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
'a group of hymns designed to cure takman, fever' (cf. Kaui*. 26, 1, note). Kau.rika employs it twice, presenting its two main characteristics. In 38, 1-7 it is used in a charm against thunderstorms, preceding the employment in a similar charm of AV. I, 13 and VII, u, both of which are palpably hymns addressed to lightning. But in 26, 1-9 it is employed further in a performance which is dis- tinctly described by Darila as a .rirorogabhaisha^ya^, ' cure for headache ' (cf. muffia .nrshaktya in st. 3 a), and by Kcrava as, atikase ^irshaktijirovedanaya^ ka. karmam, ' rites against excessive cough and pains in the head/
1 Kcyava, mawsameda^.
2 Kam. mau%-a-pra,ma ; Darila, prajna ushnteh&m ; Kcrava, mau#g-a-induka (cf. indva in the Pet. Lex., and especially in Kauj. 26, 30).
3 Kaur. pulyani ; Kej. lagan. Symbolic scattering of the fever.
4 Ke^ava here is the least obscure of the commentators, vya- dhitam agre krz'tva.
5 The text of the Sutra is very obscure. One MS. of the text reads avra^anam ; the rest, avra^atam. Darila has avra^a/rc twice (see notes 7 and 10 on p. 71 of the edition); this may be for the participle avra^an, and has served as the basis of the translation.
I, 12. Commentary. 249
details, is clearly a symbolic act of drawing the disease out of the head, and depositing it where it is supposed to have come from ; cf. the introduction to VI, 26. One is tempted, at first sight, to accuse the medicine man of the banalite of employing mu^a-grass simply because it puns with muffia, i release/ and this would be no more than Atharvanesque. Possibly, however, there is a little more contained in the practice. In 5at. Br. VI, 3, 1, 26 we have the following legend : ' Agni went away from the gods, he entered the mu^a-grass. Therefore that is hollow, and for that very reason it is as it were disfigured by smoke. The mu^a is the womb here of AgmV In that case we have here the usual attractio similium. The mu%*a is employed in drawing off the effect of lightning, because it is the natural home of fire (lightning). Cf. also 5at. Br. VI, 6, 1, 23.
Uncanny is the rite which the Kaorika prescribes in connection with the hymn at 38, 1-7. It is directed against stormy weather, durdina, the relation of which to lightning, of itself obvious, is stated explicitly in the Hariva/^ra 9609, tumula^ durdina/^ £a**sid vidyutstanayitnumat, 'and there arose a crashing storm accompanied by lightning and thunder.' The passage of the Sutra may be translated as follows: 1. 'When one goes against a storm he faces it1 while reciting AV. I, 12. 2. Stanza by stanza (he faces the storm hurling) jets of water2 (against it). 3. (And he faces it) with a sword, a firebrand, and a club 3. 4. (And he faces it) naked while wiping his forehead. 5. Into a coal-pan which he has removed outside (of the house) he makes an oblation of (the leaves of) the horse-radish
1 Kcrava, durdinam abhimukham upatishMate.
2 udava^rai^: the Brahma^as have innumerable times the ex- pression va^TO va apa^, e.g. *Sat. Br. VII, 2, 1, 17.
3 kishkuru (with variants) is unknown elsewhere, but Ke^ava in glossing it with laku/a=lagu</a is clearly well-informed. The word is doubtless identical with kishku, which the scholiast at Pa#£. Br. VI, 5, 12 glosses with da«</a.
25O HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
a. For gar&yu-ga, ' born of the (cloud-)womb/ cf. abhra-^a in st. 3, and such expressions as vidyiin meghasakha, ' the lightning whose companion is the cloud/ in the Suparaa- khyana 3, 2. The more literal meaning of the word is 'placenta-born,' an idea thoroughly Indie. Cf. Sat. Br. VI, 5, 3) 5, trivrzd dhi pragatih pita mata putro*tho garbha ulb3.mga.rayu. Cf. also VI, 6, 1, 24. Professor Kern some years ago was good enough to impart to me his own some- what different view : ' As to ga.ra.yuga.-, I think that is what the Norse skalds called a kenning, an oratorical peri- phrasis of vatsa, and this is a veiled expression for light- ning ; cf. apam vatsa as denoting the fire of lightning, and the sri vatsa, the lightning figure on the breast of Vishnu/ (Letter of May 10, 1887.) — For the epithet vr/shan as applied to lightning see now my article on .nishma, Con- tributions, Sixth Series, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Mor- genlandischen Gesellschaft, XLVIII, 565 ff. The entire passage has a good parallel in RV. IX, 74, 3, "se yo vrishtir ita usriyo vr/sha apam neta yd itautir rigmiya/i, where Soma is obviously compared with lightning.
b. The edition reads vatabhra^a(^), but the text is not absolutely certain, as Sayana comments upon vatavra^ ah 4.
1 Darila, jigrupatram.
2 Darila, kerdparwixti y a surash/re riumd&r ike *ti; Kerava, pa/er- akasamidha^.
8 pratilomakarshitas is explained in the light of ke^eshu karshita in the Mr/H^aka/ikd 16, 25.
4 Saya/za refers the entire stanza to aditya, ' the sun/
I, 12. Commentary. 25 1
Both readings are worthless ; I have substituted in my article on the Seven Hymns, vata-abhra-g-a/i. It is refreshing to see for once an emendation rendered abso- lutely certain by a later discovery. The entire P&da presents the stereotyped four component parts of a storm, vata, abhra, stanayitnu, and vrzsh/i ; in this way they are catalogued in a variety of Vedic texts ; see the article en .yushma just quoted, 1. c, pp. 569-70.
c. Read tanvar^ugo with crasis of sandhi-hiatus. The juxtaposition of rigugd and rug-an is of the punning order.
d. Read trayadha 1. — Cf. the statements about Vishnu,
who himself single passes through three regions, e.g. RV.
VIII, 29, 7, Xxmy eka urugayo vi £akrame. Resting upon
this parallelism I have taken ekam q^as as in apposition
with the subject of the clause.
a. .roll's, the salient symptom of fever, AV. I, 25, 2, 4 ;
V, 22, 2 ; VI, 20, 3.
c. I have translated anka as ' crook ' and samanka synonymically as ' hook/ Both translations are purely tentative ; anka may mean i hook/ and at present any ren- dering of samanka is an enfant perdu. The word occurs once more in the Atharvan, VI, 50, 1, apparently as the name of some pestiferous insect, or animal which destroys grain. I do not know how to mediate between the two uses of the word. Saya^a, ankan a^ana^ilan suryasya anu^aran samankan sama^anajilan samipe vartamanan antarangan api parivarabhutan devan.
d. The text of the Sa/^hita reads asya, the Padapa/^a,
asya. If the latter is correct in its interpretation, this is
the only instance in the Rig and Atharvan- vedas of asya
as a masculine. Looked at purely by itself asya grabhita
may stand for asya(/z) grabhita, and this opens out the
1 Cf. my article, On certain irregular Vedic subjunctives or imperatives, Amer. Journ. Phil. V, p. 27 (12 of the reprint).
252 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
possibility that the stanza stood originally in some other connection where a feminine was appropriate.
The stanza, in accordance with its context, is employed in Kauj. 27, 34, along with the so-called mrzgara-suktani, in a more general remedial charm, designated by Darila as a sarvabhaisha^yam.
a. jirshaktf, probably for ^irshasakti with haplology ; see Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, 1893 (Journal, vol. xvi), p. xxxv. The poet puns upon the word in Pada d with sa^atam, although sakti is more likely to come from sa^*, rather than sa£.
b. The masculine yo is difficult. I have referred it to the lightning (usriyo vr/sha, or .nishma^), which involves a considerable ellipsis, indicated by the parenthesis in the translation. But it seems to me possible to refer yo to kisa(^) in Pada a, and to translate more simply, ' Release him from headache, and also from cough, which has entered every joint of him/ Namely kas, feminine, jostles with its thematic pendant kasa, masculine, in AV. V, 22, 10 and 11 (kasa, instrumental feminine in 10; but kasam, accusa- tive masculine in 11). It requires no violent stretch of the grammatical imagination to suppose that the poet uncon- sciously has shifted his position from the feminine in Pada a to its masculine doublet kasa in Pdda b. The masculine form prevails in the classical period.
c. For .nishmo, see the article on the word, cited above, where several close parallels to this passage are assembled.
I, 14. Commentary to page 107.
The history of the interpretation of this hymn is of interest. Weber, Ind. Stud. IV, 408 (cf. also V, 218); Ludwig, Der Rigveda, III, 459 ; and Zimmer, Altin- disches Leben, p. 314, translated and interpreted the hymn as a marriage-hymn. Zimmer thought that the stanzas were spoken at the end of the ceremony, as the bridegroom
I, 14. Commentary. 253
assumed charge of the bride. The present writer, following the indications of the practices connected with the hymn in the Kaimka (36, 15-17), thought that it was a charm of a woman against a rival, and dealt with the hymn and the ritual in this sense in an article devoted to the subject in Seven Hymns of the Atharva-veda, Amer. Journ. Phil. VII, pp. 473-6. It is of interest to find now that Saya^a construes the hymn in the very same spirit.
The proceedings in the Kaus. are somewrhat as follows : 36, 15. ' While reciting AV. I, 14, the wreath, pillow (?), tooth-brush, and hair (of the woman against whom the charm is undertaken are placed) into the skin of a cow slain by Rudra, or of a funeral cow, and buried in the cavity of a mortar under a pile of three stones1. 16. The hymn is recited while the wreath is being ground up. 17. Three tufts of hair are tied (each) with a black thread (and buried under) a pile of three stones, the stones each alternately above (each tuft).' Then follows in Sutra 18 a subsidiary rite for digging the 'fortune ' up again (Ke^ava), saubhagya- kara/zam : ' Then one digs her fortune up with the formula, " That fortune of thine which they have buried into a pile of three stones, or four stones, that we now dig up, along with offspring and wealth.'' '
Throughout the hymn and the ritual the spirit of fierce hatred manifests itself in allusions to the burial rites. Thus in the ritual the anustara/zi ; in stanzas 1, 3, the word pitr/shu, translated above * with her relatives,5 may also mean (with
1 The Sutra bristles with difficulties; nishpramanda has been translated by ' pillow,' because Saya/za says, tadupabhuktamalya- kandukadantadhavanake^anam . . . (ni)khananadikarmam. But the word nishpramanda is none too certain ; some MSS. and Ke^ava read nipramanda, and Darila's comment on the word is unintel- ligible (kru/ayavargag-enduka^ ; cf. pramanda=induka^, Kau.?. 8, 17; 25, 11; 32, 29, and Kaiwika, Introduction, p. Hi). I trans- late kora by ' skin/ because Ke^ava says, faanahata tasya^ ^armawa **vesh/ya (the passage is not extracted in the edition). But cf. the word anta^ko^am in st. 4 c. Both Darila and Ke^ava explain faanahata, ' slain by Rudra/ as=^varahata, 'killed by fever.'
254 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
double entente) ' among the Fathers or manes.' The first hemistich of the third stanza, considered by itself, might be readily interpreted as being uttered at the funeral of a maiden ; indeed, it seems possible that material of this sort has been worked over for the occasion. The secondary employment of stanzas, composed primarily for the burial service, is possibly to be assumed for stanzas 2-4 of RV. VII, 55 (see Aufrecht, Ind. Stud. IV, 342), and for AV. II, 12, 7-8 (q. v.). The Anukramam makes the following curious statement in regard to our hymn : namas te astu (I, 13), bhagam asya (I, 14), iti sukte vaidyute dve anushAibhe, prathama//z vaidyuta;^ para/^ vkrunam vo*ta yamya//z va, prathamena vidyutam astaud, dvitiyena tadartha//z yamam. There seems to be no reason for associating these hymns, nor for regarding I, 14 as having any relation to lightning 1.
Padas a and c, apparently each hypermetric, may be
restored by reading, with elision and crasis, bhagasya, and
maha'budhneva.