1 The symbolism of these acts is clear : the stench of the old rope (Darila, gunaraggu) in the fire, and the etymological qualities of the two kinds of wood, delineated in st. 3, shall operate against the enemy, each in its own way.
2 For the real and symbolic meanings of these names, see the notes on sts. 3-5.
3 ingida is the typical substance that takes the place of ghee (&gya) in hostile practices. See the Paribhasha-sutra, Kaos\ 47, 3.
Viii, 8. Commentary. 583
branch of red a^vattha is fixed (in the ground), enveloped with a blue and a red thread, and then removed to the south while stanza 24 d is being recited1/ The entire practice is redolent of fierce hostility: cf. in general the introduction (paribhasha) to the abhi^arika (witchcraft) practices in Kau.y. 47, 1 ff.
The hymn has been rendered by Ludwig, Der Rigveda, III, 527 ff. ; Henry, Les livres VIII et IX de l'Atharva- veda, pp. 23. 61 ff. Cf. also Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, V, pp. 87, 405, note.
The root manth is employed in connection with Indra's feats only on the occasion of his churning the head of the demon Namu^i : the present statement is doubtless a reminiscence of that performance. See Contributions, Third Series, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. XV, 156 ff. The Sutra, however, takes manth in its more common sense of churning a fire, and embodies it in a corresponding per- formance on the part of the ritualist : see the introduction above,
It may be reasonably doubted whether the ritual, which takes putira^u in its literal and etymological sense (Kaui-. 16, ic, above), has fathomed the meaning of the word. But it is a reasonable construction, and we are, for the present, driven to accept it. In the second hemistich amitra is metrically superfluous : it may readily have crept in as a gloss from st. 1 d.
The plants are chosen with reference to the punning
etymologies that may be extracted from them. Even the
juxtaposition of a^vattha and srzmhi is intentional. For
ta^adbhanga, see Kau^ika, Introduction, p. xliv. Its pro-
blematic accentuation (PadapaMa, ta^adbhanga/z) is prob-
1 For the blue and the red threads, see the note on the stanza.
584 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
ably to be changed to ta^adbhanga (cf. Kau^. 16, 14). Ety- mologically the word means ' breaking suddenly.' The plant vadhaka, badhaka (also vadhaka, badhaka) is defined by the commentators as girimala, girimalaka, krzmimalaka, karimalaka, itself of unknown meaning ; see Kaorika, Introduction, p. xliv, and Pet. Lex., s. v. badhaka 2.
a. The Pet Lex., s. v. parusha 2) a, endorsed by Henry, renders ' may the reed turn them into reeds,' i. e. make them fragile as reeds. This is rendered very doubtful, because parusha does not elsewhere mean ' reed/ and because Darila at Kaus. 16, 14 renders ahva by pala^a. Ludwig, having at the time no access to the Sutra, renders 6 diser rauhen feinde schlachtruf mach er heiser,' which seems to us intrinsically and grammatically impossible. If any one should be sceptical about ahva in the list of fire- woods, Kaoy. 16, 14, the passage would then have to be rendered ' may (our) disjointed cry render the enemies disjointed/ or something similar. The Pada is hypermetric, but Henry's suggestion that parushahva^ in the sense of ' parusha (reed) by name ' is a gloss, deprives the passage of its subject, and its best point.
d. Geldner, Vedische Studien, I, 140, renders apavapat by ' hat gefischt.' This is excellent sense, as far as the present passage is concerned, but conflicts with the natural etymology and the clearest instances of the occurrence of the word : AV. XIX, 36, 4 (Saya^a, apavapatu mLrayatu) ; Tait. S. Ill, 3, 7, 3-
The second hemistich is hypermetric. Professor Henry
proposes to eliminate ^atam x and dasyunam, leaving per-
fect metre. Unfortunately such corrections suggest them-
1 The word does not appear in the quotation of the stanza, Muir, I.e., p. 87.
Viii, 8. Commentary. 585
selves so frequently as to render one another nugatory. An uneasy sense is left that we all know how to make better verse-lines than those that have somehow got to be in vogue among the Atharvan writers ; carried out to its full consequences this would eliminate one of the more marked peculiarities that render the Atharvan what it is. Doubtless the present translator has at times fallen into the same error.
Cf. XI, 2, 19, where the matyam is also Bhava's weapon.
Ludwig, here, 'entschluss (satyam?)' but at XI, 2, 19
(P- 55°) ' erfmdung.'
For the Sadhyas, see Weber, Indische Studien, IX, 6 ff. ; Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, I2, io, note.
Stanzas 14, 15.
The first hemistich of st. 14 is repeated at XI, 9, 24 ;
see the note there. With it goes 15 a, b, as the second
hemistich of XI, g, 24. The phrases are formulaic, being
worked over into prose form at Kaui". 73, 5. In 15 b the
pu/zya^ana^ are the sukri'ta^, ' pious deceased,' who enjoy
themselves with Yama and the Fathers. Cf. Journ. Amer.
Or. Soc. XVI, 27.
d. The meaning of ku/am is not altogether certain. The Pet. Lexs., Ludwig, and Henry, 'horn;' this is unlikely because of Kaay. 16, 16: horns of a^vattha-wood would be very strange. Geldner, Vedische Studien, I, 139, ren- ders it by trap, which is tempting on account of the seem- ing parallelism of the two halves of the stanza. This is the rendering I had in mind in the treatment of the expression a^vatthani ku/ani in Kauj\ 16, 16. Darila says unintel- ligibly, kufam khadanam, and my comparison of the word khada (according to Darila at Kaiu. 38, 7 = svabhava^a/^ garta/z, 'a natural cavity') was undertaken in the belief that the word meant something like ' pitfall.' But now
586 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
I prefer to rely upon the expression, tasya na ku/ena praghnanti in 5at. Br. Ill, 8, 1, 15 (cf. also Ait. Br. VI, 24, 12), rather than the general parallelism. Cf. Contri- butions, Sixth Series, Zeitschr. d. Deustch. Morgenl. Ge- sellsch. XLVIII, 546 ff.
c. The Pet. Lexs. take pr/^nibahu^ as an independent
noun, ' a certain mythical being.' But fanciful colours are
attributed with great predilection to Rudra and all his
forms (see the introduction to XI, 2). Cf. the epithet
'gold-armed' in the 6atarudriya, Va£\ S. XVI, 17, and in
general Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, IV2, p. 322 ff.
I have taken the word with jarva (nominative with voca-
tive) : cf. RV. IV, 50, 10.
a. For osham of the edition the MSS. present asham.
In the Index Verborum, p. 383, 1. 1, the word is still
further corrected to osham, 'quickly.' This leaves the
genitive mrztyor without governing word, and we have
supplied ' fetter,' according to well-known parallels (mrztyor
param ?). One may also think of osham in the sense of
* fire, agony ' (of death).
c. Our translation of akshu is little more than a guess. It seems hard to acquiesce in Geldner's proposition (endorsed by Henry), Vedische Studien, I, 136, that akshu means ' pole' (cf. sts. 5, 12), as long as this involves a 'thousand- eyed pole' in AV. IX, 3, 8 (see the note there). However salient a pole may be in the construction of a house, the epithet sahasraksha is decidedly far-fetched. Further, we should expect the reverse order in the compound (^alakshu), since the poles are accessory in their role of supporters of the net 1. Non liquet.
The second hemistich recurs at VI, 32, 3 (see the note there); cf. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 181. Perhaps
1 The word is not mentioned in Goldstucker's Sanskrit Lexicon.
Ix, I. Commentary. 587
Ludwig's simple rendering of ^/zataram, ' der sie kennt,' is
preferable.
The remainder of the hymn is prose in the style of the Brahma/zas. The stanza is rubricated along with a number of others at Kauy. 15, 11 : the king and his charioteer are made to step upon the war-chariot, preparatory to battle. The renderings are necessarily problematic, owing to want of knowledge of the real properties of the chariot (cf. Zimmer, p. 251): the pakshasi which are compared with heaven and earth are themselves equal to rodasi, ' the two hemispheres,' an allusion doubtless intentional. For pari- rathyam I have followed Nilaka/zMa's gloss to parirathya, Mahabh. VIII, 1487, a very reasonable rendering. Ludwig, ' wagenrand.'
Cf. Kaui*. 16, 18-20 in the introduction above. From the time of RV. X, 85, 28 onwards * blue and red ' are magic colours. At Ykg. S. XVI, 47 ; Maitr. S. II, 9, 9 ; Tait. S. IV, 5, 10, 1, they are the colours of Rudra. Cf. AV. IV, 17, 4; the introduction to VII, 116; Kauj. 32, 17; 40,4; 48, 40 ; 83, 4. See also the passages quoted by Winternitz, Das Altindische Hochzeitsrituell, p. 67, and especially Baudhayana's (I, 8) implied explanation of the two colours as representations of night and day, which prob- ably forms the true basis of the conception.
IX, 1. Commentary to page 229.
The drink called madhu, 'honey/ is associated from
earliest times with the cult of the Ai'vins \ and a more
specific conception endows them with a honey-lash (ma-
dhumati kaj-a or madhuka^a), which instils sweetness, food,
and strength into the sacrifice and into men. The allu-
1 See Hillebrandt, Soma und verwandte Gotter, p. 239 if. Cf. also the madhubrahmaraam (madhukaWa, madhuvidya), imparted to the A^vins by Dadhya^ : Sat. Br. IV, 1, 5, 18 ; XIV, 1, 1, 18 ff. ; 5, 5, 17 ff. ; Ind. Stud. I, 290; Sacred Books, XII, p. xxxiv.
588 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
sions of the Rig-veda and the Srauta- literature to this hoaey-lash are of the incidental sort ; neither the texts nor the commentaries elucidate the point in any way. The Atharvan, however, devotes to it an independent effort *, and that too in the cosmogonic-theosophic style of mock profundity, which allows the writer to attribute to the honey-whip creative and sustaining power, and places men in the attitude of deeply speculative reverence towards it. The apotheosis of the honey-lash resembles therefore that of the ukkkishtdi, AV. XI, 7 (cf. the introduction there), or the manipulation in the Brahma^as of specific features of the sacrifice or sacrificial implements as divine beings.
The mythic or realistic background of the honey-lash is not at all manifest. The Pet. Lex., under madhuka^a, suggests some implement with which the honey was beaten at the sacrifice, but the very slender use of the honey in the ritual (cf. Hillebrandt, I.e., 241) fails to reveal either the act or the occasion. Henry, Les livres VIII et IX de l'Atharva-veda, p. 115, assumes 'an evident allegory of the lightning which whips the clouds and produces the rain/ This in itself very reasonable explanation is pro- blematic because the whip belongs to A^vins, and their connection with natural phenomena of this sort does not accord with their character in general. And yet, certain allusions in the first ten stanzas of this hymn (cf. especially stanzas 10 and 20) seem to lend support to a construction not very far removed from this. At RV. V, 83, 3 Par- £*anya sends his rain-messengers, as a charioteer who whips his horses with the lash. The patter and the streaming down of the rain (honey) may have suggested the compari- son with the lash2. Bergaigne, La Religion Vedique, II,
1 Cf. RV. IX, ii, 2, where it is stated that the Atharvans mixed milk with honey.
2 Yaska's Nigha/z/avas exhibit ka^a among the words for voice (vak); cf. Nirukta IX, 19. Saya^a at RV. I, 157, 4 has rain distinctly in his mind, but rather in reference to the word madhu- matya (madhu, udakanama, Nigh. I, 12) than the word ka.ra. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 209, note, denies this con-
Ix, I. Commentary. 589
433, has collected a sufficient number of passages in which the A sv'ms set the waters in motion, and cause the heavenly- rivers to flow : madhuka^a may therefore amount simply to ' the honey (the water) that lashes.'
In the Atharvan ritual the hymn is known as the madhu- suktam, ' honey-hymn.' Under this designation it is em- ployed while mixing honey with milk in the course of the agnish/oma (Vait. Su. 16, 12). In the Kau^ika and the sub- sidiary texts the hymn is simply a var^asyam (sc. suktam), 'designed to bestow lustre' (cf. sts. 11-14, 16, 17); see Kaui". io, 24 ; 12,15; 13, 6, and the second var/£asyaga/za of the Ga;/amala, Ath. Parii*. 32, 27 (Kau^. 12, 10, note).