Hymns of the Atharva-Veda — SBE Vol. 42 (Clarendon Press, 1897) page scans

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 Anukramawi describes it as a yaksh- mandsanam siktam, ‘a hymn which cures consumption’ (cf. the word kdsds ‘from cough’ in st. 3); in the Gama- mala, Ath. Paris. 32, 7, it is one of the takmandsanagama,

* Note the words st4na/ and stanayitnur respectively, in VII, ro and VII, 11, 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. Kaus. 26, 1, note). Kausika employs it twice, presenting its two main characteristics. In 38, I-7 it is used in a charm against thunderstorms, preceding the employment in a similar charm of AV. I, 13 and VII, 11, 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 sirorogabhaishagyam, ‘cure for headache’ (cf. mu#ka sirshaktya in st. 3a), and by Kesava as, atikase sirshaktisirovedanayam ka karmazi, ‘rites against excessive cough and pains in the head.’

The latter practice is as follows: 1. ‘While reciting AV. I, 12 (the priest) lets (the patient) drink of fat’, honey, © ghee, and sesame-oil. 2. (The patient), his head covered with a turban made of muf#ga-grass? (saccharum munja roxburgiense), goes along carrying in his left hand parched grain® in a sieve, from which he scatters it with his left hand. 3. (The patient then goes on, carrying) in his left hand the sieve and the turban, in his right hand a how- string and an axe. 4. The (patient goes) in front of the priest who gives the orders*. 5. On the spot where the disease seizes upon him he puts down the sieve and the turban. 6. And (also) the bowstring. 7. He returns home’. 8. (The patient) puts ghee up his nose. 9g. (The priest) while supporting the patient’s head with a staff (of bamboo) having five knots mutters (the hymn). The sense of these practices, obscure though they are in many

1 Kesava, mamsamedah.

> Kaus. maufga-prasna; Déarila, prasna ushztsham; + Kesava, mau7iga-incuka (cf. izdva in the Pet. Lex., and especially in Kaus. 26, 30).

° Kaus. pfilyani; Kes. lagén. Symbolic scattering of the fever.

* Kesava here is the least obscure of the commentators, vy4- dhitam agre kritva.

* The text of the Sftra is very obscure. One MS. of the text: reads Avraganam; the rest, 4vragatam. Dérila has 4vragam twice (see notes 7 and 10 on p. 71 of the edition); this may be for the participle vragan, and has served as the basis of the translation.

Toot 2... +-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 banalité of employing muzga-grass simply because it puns with mu*#&a, ‘release, and this would be no more than Atharvanesque. Possibly, however, there is a little more contained in the practice. In Sat. Br. VI, 3, 1, 26 we have the following legend: ‘ Agni went away from the gods, he entered the mu#ga-grass. Therefore that is hollow, and for that very reason it is as it were disfigured by smoke. The mu”ga is the womb here of Agni.’ In that case we have here the usual attractio similium. The muzga is employed in drawing off the effect of lightning, because — it is the natural home of fire (lightning). Cf. also Sat. Br. Way O, 3, 2%.

Uncanny is the rite which the Kausika 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 Harivaszsa 9609, tumulaw durdinam kas sid vidyutstanayitnumat, ‘and there arose a crashing storm accompanied by lightning and thunder.’ The passage of the Siitra may be translated as follows: 1. ‘When one goes against a storm he faces it! while reciting AV. I, 12. 2. Stanza by stanza (he faces the storm hurling) jets of water? (against it). 3. (And he faces it) with a sword, a firebrand, and a club*. 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

’ Kesava. durdinam abhimukham upatish//ate.

* udavagraid: the Brahmamas have innumerable times the ex- pression vagro va apah, e.g. Sat. Br. VII, 2, 1, 17.

* kishkuru (with variants) is unknown elsewhere, but Kesava in glossing it with laku/a=laguda is clearly well-informed. The word is doubtless identical with kishku, which the scholiast at Pa#é. Br. VI, 5, 12 glosses with danda,

250 HYMNS OF THE ATdAARVA-VEDA.

tree! and pebbles. 6. He puts on (fagots of) the kera? and arka (calotropis gigantea) plants. 7. Beaten by the rain, with dishevelled hair *, going thrice around a pit he quickly buries into it the arka-wood.’ The symbolism of this performance is not altogether transparent; the use of the arka is doubtless founded upon a double entente: arka is ‘flash of lightning, and its cessation is coaxed by burying the arka-wood in the pit.

Stanza L

a. For garayu-ga, ‘ born of the (cloud-)womb, cf. abhra-ga in st. 3, and such expressions as vidyin meghasakha, ‘the lightning whose companion is the cloud,’ in the Suparza- khyana 3, 2. The more literal meaning of the word is ‘placenta-born,’ an idea thoroughly Indic. Cf. Sat. Br. VI, 5, 3, 5, trivrzd dhi pragatizZ pita mata putro=tho garbha ulbam garayu. 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 gardyuga-, 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. apdm vatsa as denoting the fire of lightning, and the srivatsa, the lightning figure on the breast of Vishmu.’ (Letter of May 10, 1887.)—For the epithet vvéshan as applied to lightning see now my article on sishma, 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, tse yd vrishéér ita usriyo vv/shad apém netd ya itadtir 77gmiyah, where Soma is obviously compared with lightning.

b. The edition reads vatabhragA(Z), but the text is not absolutely certain, as SAyaza comments upon vatavragah *.

’ Darila, sigrupatrazi.

* Darila, keraparnisti ya surash/re pumdarikesti; Kesava, pa/er- akasamidhaf.

* pratilomakarshitas is explained in the light of keseshu karshita in the Mrzkkhakafika 16, 25.

* Sayama refers the entire stanza to Aditya, ‘the sun.’

I, 12. Commentary. 25i

Both readings are worthless; I have substituted in my article on the Seven Hymns, vata-abhra-gaéz. It is refreshing to see for once an emendation rendered abso- lutely certain by a later discovery. The entire Pada presents the stereotyped four component parts of a storm, vata, abhra, stanayitnu, and vvish/i; in this way they are catalogued in a variety of Vedic texts; see the article on sushma just quoted, I|.c., pp. 569-70.

ce. Read tanvargug6é with crasis of sandhi-hiatus. The juxtaposition of r7gugo and rugan is of the punning order.

d. Read trayadha1.—Cf. the statements about Vishzu, who himself single passes through three regions, e.g. RV. VIII, 29, 7, trizy éka urugdyé vi kakrame. Resting upon this parallelism I have taken ékam dgas as in apposition | with the subject of the clause.

a. sokis, the salient symptom of fever, AY. I, 25, 2, 4; Mw, ates VI, 20, 3:

e. I have translated anka as ‘crodk’* and samanka synonymically as ‘hook.’ Both translations are purely tentative ; anka may mean ‘ 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. Sdyawva, ankan a#kanasilan siryasya anugaran samankan samazkanasilan samipe vartamanan antarangan api parivarabhitan devan.

d. The text of the Samhita reads asyd, the Padapafha,
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 asy4 grabhita
may stand for asya(/) grabhité, and this opens out the

' Cf. my article, On certain irregular Vedic subjunctives or imperatives, Amer. Journ. Phil. V, p. 27 (12 of the reprint).

252 HYMNS OF THE ATIIARVA-VEDA.

_— aad

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 Kaus. 27, 34, along with the so-called mr7gara-siktani, in a more general remedial charm, designated by Darila as a sarvabhaishagyam.

a. sirshakt{, probably for sirshasakti 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 sakatam, although sakti is more likely to come from sav#g, rather than sa&.

b. The masculine yé is difficult. I have referred it to the lightning (usriyo vv/sh4, or sishmak), which involves a considerable ellipsis, indicated by the parenthesis in the translation. But it seems to me possible to refer yo to kasa(#) 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 kasd, masculine, in AV. V, 22, 10 and 11 (kasd, instrumental feminine in 10; but kdsdm, 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 kds4 in Pada b. The masculine form prevails in the classical period.

ce. For sishmo, see the article on the word, cited above, where several close parallels to this passage are assembled.

I, 14. COMMENTARY TO PAGE I07.

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 Kausika (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 Sayana construes the hymn in the very same spirit.

The proceedings in the Kaus. are somewhat 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 stones'. 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 Sitra 18 a subsidiary rite for digging the ‘fortune’ up again (Kesava), saubhagya- karazam : ‘ 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 anustaramt; in stanzas 1, 3, the word pitréshu, translated above ‘ with her relatives, may also mean (with

* The Sfitra bristles with difficulties; nishpramanda has been translated by ‘pillow,’ because Sayama says, tadupabhuktamAlya- kandukadantadhavanakesanam. .. (ni)khananadikarmazi. But the word nishpramanda is none too certain; some MSS. and Kesava read nipramanda, and Déarila’s comment on the word is unintel- ligible (kridAyavargagenduka’; cf. pramanda=indukaf, Kaus. 8, 17; 25, 11; 32, 29, and Kausika, Introduction, p. lii). I trans- late kosa by ‘skin,’ because Kesava says, isanahata tasyah karmana «xvesh/ya (the passage is not extracted in the edition). But cf. the word anta#kos4m in st. 4c. Both Darila and Kesava explain isanahatd, ‘slain by Rudra,’ as=gvarahata, ‘killed by fever.’