General Index to the 49 Volumes of the Sacred Books of the East (SBE Vol. 50; comp. M. Winternitz, 1910)

woman of the waters (apyd yosha/za) perform a similar service : ' And the Gandharvi, the woman of the water, spake; when the reeds rustle may she protect my mind V Primarily, the madness which the Gandharvas and Apsaras can cause, and which they are called upon to remove, is, in accordance with the general character of these divinities, the madness of love ; cf. the story of Urvasi and Pururavas (RV. X, 95, especially st. 14).

VI, 112. Commentary to page 164.

This and the following hymn reflect a cycle of legends to which the translator has devoted an article in the Proc. Amer. Or. Soc, March, 1894 (Journal, vol. xvi, p. cxix ff.), entitled, c Trita, the scapegoat of the gods.' Without the light of the conceptions there alluded to the hymns are hardly intelligible 2, and a brief statement of them here will not be out of place. At Maitr. S. IV, 1, 9, it is stated that the gods did not find a person upon whom they might be able to wipe off from themselves the bloody part of the sacrifice, i.e. their guilt. Agni spat upon the waters, and successively three personages, Ekata, Dvita, and Trita, were born. The gods wiped off their guilt upon them ; they in turn wiped themselves upon one who was overtaken by the rising sun, i.e. one over whom the sun had risen while he was asleep; this one wiped himself upon one who was over- taken by the setting sun ; he upon one afflicted with brown teeth ; he upon one with diseased nails ; he upon one that had married a younger sister, before the older was married ; he upon one whose younger brother had married before himself; he upon one who had married before his older brother ; he upon one who had slain a man ; he upon one who had committed an abortion. ' Beyond him who has committed an abortion the sin does not pass.'

In Tait. Br. Ill, 2, 8, 9 ff. the same story is told with

1 Cf. Pischel, Vedische Studien, I, 188.

2 Cf. Contributions, Third Series, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. XV, 163; Fifth Series, ib. XVI, 3.

522 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.

variants, the chief difference being that the culminating sin is the slaying of a Brahman : ' Beyond the slayer of a Brahman the sin does not pass/ Still other versions occur in the K4/A. S. XXXI, 7; Kap. S. XLVII, 7 (cf. also .Sat. Br. I, 2, 2, 8 ; Ka/y. Sr. II, 5, 26 ; Mahidhara to Va£\ S. I, 23 ; Apast. Sr. I, 25, 15); and similar lists of sinful personages are to be quoted from a variety of Sutras, and later Smarta-texts ; see Delbruck, Die Indoger- manischen Verwandtschaftsverhaltnisse, in the Transac- tions of the Royal Saxon Society, vol. xi, nr. v, p. 578 ff. (200 ff. of the reprint) ; cf. also Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 315. All those mentioned in the lists are obviously regarded as burdened with guilt (enas) ; and the legend clearly marks them as persons upon whom, therefore, the guilt of others may be unloaded.

In another version of the legend, Sat. Br. I, 2, 3, 1 ff., Trita and his two shadowy companions Ekata and Dvita roam about with Indra, and when the latter slays VLsvarupa, the son of Tvash/ar, they are saddled with this crime, equivalent to the murder of a Brahman, because they ' knew about his going to be killed/ The truth is this : Indra's drastic performances upon the great variety of demons whom he slays, coupled as they are at times with wiles and treachery, have not failed to arouse the compunctions of a certain school of Vedic moralists (see, e.g. TS. VI, 5, i, 1-3 ; Tait. Br. I, 7, 1, 7. 8 ; Tank. Br. XII, 6, 8 ; XX, 15, 6 ; Maitr. S. IV, 3, 4 ; 5, 6), and they have given rise to the notion of misdeeds on the part of the gods in general (devainasa, AV. VI, in, 3; X, 1, 12). It was natural, now, that some personage closely associated with Indra — a personage, moreover, who could be construed as sub- servient, or at least ancillary to him— should be picked out for the unenviable position. For this Trita seems fitted in an eminent degree. Trita is the double of Indra in his struggle with the demons (RV. I, 187, 1), or his coadjutor (RV. I, 52, 5 ; V, 86, 1 ; VIII, 7, 24, and especially X, 8, 8). Whether we regard him as the faded predecessor of Indra in the role of a demiurge, being, as it were, the Indo-Iranian

Vi, 112. Commentary. 523

Hercules (cf. the Avestan Thraetaona Athwya) ; whether we regard him as Indra's lieutenant (see the passages of the RV. just cited) ; or whether we follow Bergaigne, La Religion Vedique, II, 326, 330, in viewing him as a divine sacrificer; in each case the moralising fancy, which would whitewash the cruelties incidental upon Indra's valued services, naturally alights upon Trita, and makes him bear the burden of his superior's misdeeds. And this again has been generalised so that in AV. VI, J 13 the gods in general, without specification, are said to have wiped off their guilt upon Trita. He in his turn passes off his guilt upon the sinners among men.

The rites within which AV. VI, 1 12 and 113 are embedded in Kaui*. 46, 26-9 have for their object the removal of the sin of him whose younger brother marries first, as also of the prematurely married younger brother. Symbolically the sin is again removed, this time to a non-living object, to wit: * While reciting VI, wx and 113 (the performing priest) ties fetters of mu^a-grass upon the limbs of the parivitti and the parivividana *, as they sit at the edge of a body of water (a river), washes them by means of bunches of grass, and rinses them off. Placing other fetters upon the foam (in the river) he lets them flow away while reciting the hemistich, VI, 113, 2 c, d. And having entered the dwelling (the priest) sprinkles them while reciting all the hymns to the waters (see Kau^. 7, 4, note).

The treatment of the Kau^ika embraces but one aspect of the hymn, in employing it in connection with the ex-

1 Darila, ' the younger brother along with the unmarried older brother/ Ke^ava somewhat differently, ' an expiatory performance for him who marries, sets up the fire, and is consecrated for the soma-sacrifice, while the older brother is living/ Cf. the sins of the paryadhatar and the paryahita, ' the younger brother who sets up the fire, and the older brother who is passively implicated in the same sin ; ' and the pariyash/ar and the parish/a, ' the younger brother who is consecrated for the sacrifice before the older, and the older brother who is passively implicated in the same sin/ See Delbruck, 1. c, pp. 580-1 (202-3).

524 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.

piatory performances of the parivitta and the parivividana. It seems that this is too narrow, and that the hymns were constructed to cover all the crimes in the catalogues con- nected with the legend of Trita, as mentioned above. This at least is in Kcrava's mind ; see the foot-note. Further, the text of both hymns (VI, 1 12, 3 ; 113, 2) states distinctly that the sins in question shall be wiped off upon the abor- tionist, the bhru/zahan, whose crime figures as a most shocking one at the end of the lists. This indicates that the entire list of sins is in the mind of the poet, even though he intends to direct his charm against some special part of them. Finally, the expression dvadajadha in VI, 113,3, refers, in my opinion, again to the list of crimes which are stated variously as from 9-11 in number, the use of the numeral 12 being due to its formulary and solemn character. From all this it seems to me that the hymns have in mind at least all those sins that arise from the inversion of the order of precedence as between the younger and older brothers, and probably the rest also.

The hymns have been translated by Ludwig, Der Rig- veda, 111,469,444; Grill2, pp. 15, 171; Hardy, Die Vedisch- brahmanische Periode, p. 201. Cf. also Zimmer's luminous allusion to VI, 113, Altindisches Leben, p. 315 ; and Ber- gaigne et Henry, Manuel Vedique, p. 154. Ludwig intro- duces VI, 112 with the caption ' Heirat. Fiir vater mutter sohn/ and defines it (1. c, p. 470) as follows : ' Der bruder der vor seinem altern geheiratet hat, oder (so the text) der altere, der den jungern friiher hat heiraten lassen, hat dadurch trockenheit verursacht. Er wird gebunden, seine frau, sein kind, bisz der regen ihn erlost.' Support for this statement is wanting, and the author has not defined his motives. Grill treats both hymns rather too vaguely under the caption 'krankheit' (p. 8 ff.). The Anukramam defines VI, 112 as agneyam ; VI, 113 as paushwam.

a, b. Our reference of the pronoun ayam to the delin- quent younger brother, the parivividana or parivettar, while

Vi, 112. Commentary. 525

not altogether certain, seems better than Grill's to some disease, a conception which leads him to emend the word to iyam (sc. grahi/fc). Both Ludwig and Grill, moreover, refer gyeshtMm to * the father,' who, to be sure, is mentioned in st. 2 in a general way, along with the mother and the sons, ' release them all, father, sons, and mother/ This is simply another way of saying, ' release the entire family from the consequences of the sin committed by a single member.5 The point of the hymn is stated in the first Pada, and their rendering of ^yesh/Mm causes them to miss it1.

I do not know whether the selection of Agni as the helping agent is of the general sort, or whether it refers to the legends reported above, in all of which Agni plays a part. In the versions of the Maitr. S. and Tait. Br. Agni helps the gods to free themselves from their pollution, and he is introduced also in the narrative of the .Sat. Br. But in general Agni chases away evil demons, protects against poverty, straits, and enmities (RV. IV, 11, 5) ; especially does he remove the consequences of sin, vy enaz/zsi jLyratho vishvag agne (RV. IV, 1 2, 5).

c. Grahi is the attack of disease personified as a female demon. Since the word is derived from the root grah, ' seize/ she is supposed to fetter the sick person (cf. the second stanza), and the medicine man's practices take the turn of freeing him from them symbolically ; see the Kaiuika above, and cf. RV. X, 161, 1 ; AV. II, 9, 1.

d. ' May all the gods give thee leave,' i. e. may they
support thee in thy undertaking, as e.g. Agni is supported
by a train of gods when he drives out fever in AV. V,
22, 1.

1 The entire hemistich, however, may have been secondarily adapted to the present situation : gyesh/Mm vadhit reminds us of £yesh//foghni', the designation of a certain constellation (VI, no, 2), and Pada b repeats formulaically VI, no, 2 b, which obviously alludes to the constellation mula. Cf. the introduction to that hymn and the note on its second stanza.

526 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.

b. The use of the number three is formulary and solemn. I see no possibility of pointing out any three persons of the family, especially subject to the consequences of the illegal marriage, since primarily only the parivitta and the parivividana are involved. The cataloguing of father, sons, and mother in Pada d simply expands the notion contained in the solemn number three.

a. For parivitta the Kau^ika (46, 26) substitutes the synonymous parivitti. Ludwig's suggested emendation to parivetta, 'the younger brother who marries before the older' (= parivividana in the Kauj., 1. a), is unnecessary, since both brothers alike are affected by the sin, wherever these conceptions crop out, and the mention of the older is as appropriate as that of the younger ; cf. the monograph of Prof. Delbriick cited above, p. 578 ff. (200 ff.).