IV, 20. COMMENTARY. 399 flora. The Kausika, 28, 7, mentions the name of the plant as sadampushpa ; this is glossed by Darila with trisaz- dhya and by Kesava with samdhya (probably a corruption of trisamdhya). The Sitra reads: 4 pasyatisti sadam- pushpamazim badhnati, ‘with AV. IV, 20 he ties on as an amulet the plant sadampushpa.’ The plant is mentioned again along with others in a charm directed against witch- craft in 39, 6, and Sayaza defines it in agreement with Kausika, he devi sadaspushpakhye oshadhe; cf. also sadapushpi in the lexicons. The plant seems to be the calotropis gigantea; cf. AKaraka-samhita I, 4, 3. For amulets derived from the vegetable kingdom see Seven Hymns of the Atharva-veda, Amer. Journ. Phil. VII, 478, and for amulets in general Kaus. 7, 19. The hymn is rubricated further in the list of stanzas designated as #ata- nani (sc. siktani), ‘hymns to chase away with, in Kaus. 8, 25, and the Gavzamala, Ath. Paris. 32, 4, adds it also to the three hymns which Kaus. 8, 24 describes as the matrz- namani (sc. siktani). The reason for this classification is the expression devy (oshadhe) in stanzas 1 and 2. See the note at Kaus. 8, 24, and cf. for the matvzgaza our remarks in the introduction to VI, 111. The Anukramazi follows these secondary considerations, designating the hymn as matrvznamadaivatam, its author being Matvznamarshi.
The hymn has been translated by Ludwig, Der Rig-
veda, III, 525, and Grill’, pp. 2, 133; cf. also Hillebrandt’s
Vedachrestomathie, p. 48.
For the description of the plant in this stanza, cf. maz- pasya in VII, 38, 1, and see the introduction to VI, 139. I have upheld in my translation the text of the edition, guaranteed as it is by the unanimous tradition of the MSS. of the Saunakiya-sakha. All corrections, including the important variant pasyasi for pasyati throughout the stanza in the Paippalada, seem to me in this instance to amount to the substitution of a better literary performance for a poorer one; they do not bring with them the proof that
400 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
the priests of our school ever had any other text, or, what is more to the point, that the original versifex had com- posed differently. The merit of the Paippaldda’s pasyasi is so obvious that it may be due to a conscious improve- ment on the part of its author. The metre of the stanza is irregular (Anukramawi, svarag); the first Pada is hyper- catalectic, the third Pada may be sustained by reading, with elision and crasis, divadntariksham for divam anta- riksham. Hillebrandt’s suggestion, accepted by Grill, that ad be thrown out seems to me unnecessarily violent.
a. Hillebrandt would restore the Pada: pasyati prati pasyati; Grill (with the help of the Paippalada), 4 pasyasi pra pasyasi, continuing with pasyasi throughout. Sayaza retains the third person, referring the stanza to the person who wears the amulet: he devi sadaspushpakhye oshadhe tvadvikaramazidharako:yam ganas tvatprasddad dapasyati agamibhayakarazam pratihartum ganati, ‘O goddess plant, sadampushpa by name, this person here, who wears an amulet fabricated out of thee, by thy favour perceives the © cause of approaching danger, and knows how to repel it.’ The emendation of prati to pra (Grill) is especially unde- sirable, as the same expression occurs in a closely parallel situation, AV. VII, 13, 2.
b. Grill suspects the second pasyati, and imagines oshadhe in its place.
d. The temptation to emend the vocative devi to the
nominative devi is great. The sense then would be that
the amulet itself sees all dangers. Grill, as we have seen
above, adopts the Paippalada reading pasyasi, is thus
enabled to retain devi, and also obtains essentially the
same sense.
a. Read prithviz. The three heavens are well known; see, e.g. AV. V,'4,°9° VI, 95, 1; VT oo ee 6 (cf. the note on V, 4, 3). For the three earths see RV. I, 108, 9; II, 27, 8; TH, 66,25 AV Viper anc Original Sanskrit Texts, V, p. 305, note; Zimmer, Altin- disches Leben, p. 357; Bergaigne, La Religion Védique, I,
Iv, 20. Commentary. 401
239. (Cf. also Yasna XI, 7: madhemé thrishvé ainhado zem6, ‘in the middle third of this earth.’
a,b. divydsya suparvdsya ...kaninika is rendered by Ludwig, ‘dises himlischen adlers kleine tochter ;’ by Grill, ‘der Augenstern des Adlers, der am Himmel ist.’ Sayaza glosses suparzd by garutmant, which suggests RV. I, 164, 46. Grill follows the Pet. Lex. [s.v. 2 a). a)] in regarding the divine eagle as the sun. But perhaps the lightning-fire is in the mind of the poet. At Vag. S. XVII, 72; XVIII, 51; Sat. Br. IX, 2, 3, 343; 4, 4, 3, the divinity addressed, suparvo:si garutman, is treated distinctly as Agni, and Mahidhara states this plainly. In Maitr. S. I, 2, 5; Vag. S. IV, 32; Tait. S. VI, 1, 7, 3, ‘the eye-ball (kaniniké, kaninaka) of Agni’s eye’ is spoken of. The expression divya suparvza may be the exact equivalent of divaz syéna, and that, I believe I have proved, is Agni, the lightning, personified as a divine eagle; see Contributions, Fifth Series, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. XVI, 1 ff. The descent of this eagle, or the Gayatri, as the Brahmavzas have it, is frequently disturbed by a heavenly archer Kvzsanu who wounds the eagle, so that he loses a feather which falls to the earth, and grows up as a plant or tree. See Adalbert Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des G6ottertranks, p- 148 (first edition). The use of the word suparza in our edition is, in my opinion, intended to convey a double entente, ‘bird’ and ‘having beautiful leaves. Cf. Tait. S. VI, 1, 1, 5, where Vvitra’s eye-ball (kaninika) flies away after he had been slain by Indra, and turns into salve (Aiganam). Ludwig does not comment upon his transla- tion of kaninika by ‘kleine tochter,’ rather than ‘ eye-ball ;’ it may possibly turn out correct when RV. X, 40, 9 yields up its meaning. We have there as follows: ganishZa yosha patdyat kaninakoé vi #4sruhan virtiidhad, a passage which suggests the situation in our stanza completely and yet vaguely. But it is interpreting obscurum per obscurius
[42] pd
402 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
to bring the RV. stanza into play. Cf. also our note at We fy Oe |
e. Sdyava, gagadrakshartham oshadhiripeza bhimav avatirias si.
b. & dadhat. Zimmer, l.c., 204, construes this as an
augmentless imperfect. In the Saszhita the augmented
form would not differ, ddadhat. The sense is satisfactory —
either way.
ce. Sayava comments upon tvaya instead of taya, asin st. 2.
d. ‘The Sidra and the Arya, i.e. every kind of person,
as we should say in America ‘black and white. The
phrase is formulaic, as may be seen from the compound
sidraryau (Mahidhara, sidravaisyau), Vag. S. XIV, 30;
Sat. Br. VIII, 4, 3, 12. See in general Muir, Original
Sanskrit Texts, II, 368; Ludwig, Der Rigveda, III, 212;
Zimmer, lic:, L177, 20421 O49 53
a,b. ripavzi and 4tmanam are antithetical: rdpavi, ‘the outer forms of things ;’ 4tmanam, ‘thy own nature.’ It is
Iv, 20. Commentary. 403
a controlling characteristic of Vedic conceptions that the inner, true nature of any divinity, or instrument of power, must be understood in order to control its influence or power: ya evam veda, and ya evam vidvan in the Brah- mawas are crystallisations of this idea; cf. AV. I, 13, 3; VI, 46,2; VII, 12, 2, &c.
e. sahasrakaksho, here, and XIX, 35, 3, as epithet of the
plant gangida, is a vocative from a stem sahasra-fakshu.
The beginnings of a stem #akshu, a pendant of akshus in
the ablative kakshos, RV. X, 90, 13. Transition forms
between the us- and u-declensions (as also between the
is- and i-declensions) are not uncommon in the Veda; see
Lanman, in the Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. X, 568 ff.
d. For the class of demons called kimidin, see AV. I, 7: Soot, tec VII. 9 263) 04,.2 > 6; 21.5 ALL 7,40.
For yatudhdna, -nf, and pisé#a, see the hymns I, 7 and 8.
a. Kasyapa is a name to conjure with in the Atharvan writings ; amulets and charms handled by him are peculiarly pomertul(e.o. I, 14,4; 1V, 37,15 VIL, 5,14). Hé rises to the dignity of the supreme self-existing (svayazz-bhi) peme ap AV, XIX, 53,.10; cf:also Tait..S.°V;:6, 1, 1, and see the Pet. Lex. s.v. 2 b. He is also intimately related with forms of the sun, Sairya and Savitar, as is stated expressly in Tait. Ar. I,7,1; see also Tait. Ar. I, 8, 6, and compare Tait. S.V,6,1,1 with AV. I, 33,1b. This fact may by itself account for the expression kasyapasya Rakshur asi. In fact kasyapa is the sun as a tortoise, that creeps its slow course across the sky; cf. the conceptions of the sun as a hermit, and a Brahman disciple, XI, 5, introduction. Only we must not forget that these writings neglect no opportunity of being guided in their construc- tions by puns, even of the most atrocious sort, and kasydpa surely suggests pasyaka, ‘seer, to the Atharvan mind, as is written distinctly in Tait. Ar. I, 8, 8, kasyapak pasyako
pd 2
404 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
bhavati yat sarvam paripasyati. The name kasydapa is in some special relation to the Atharvan writings, not as yet fully cleared up; cf. the author in the Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. XI, p. 377.
b. The MSS. read faturakshak, but Sayaza fitly com- ments upon faturakshyd/, the form as emended in Roth and Whitney’s edition; cf. akshos for akshyos in AV. V, 4, 10 (see the note). The ‘ four-eyed bitch’ is Sarama the mother of the two four-eyed dogs of Yama‘, Syama and Sabala. which I have explained as the sun and the moon ; see Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. XV, 163 ff. The epithet ‘ four- eyed ’ seems possibly to be derived from the same view, namely the capacity of the two dogs to see both by day (the sun), and by night (the moon). The Paippalada as quoted by Grill®, p. 135, makes the notable statement that ‘the four-eyed dog (obviously the moon) overlooks by night the sphere of the night,’ yatha sv4 aturaksho ratrim naktastipasyati. In practice the fiction of a four- eyed dog is materialised both by the Hindus and Iranians in the form of a dog with marks over the eyes; sec my article, l.c., p. 165, note 1,and Kaegi in the Philolo- gische Abhandlungen fiir Heinrich Schweizer-Sidler, p. 64, note 57.
e. vidhré, lit. ‘in the clear sky;’ Ludwig, ‘im hellen; Grill, ‘heiteren tags.’ stiryam iva is to be read as three syllables, as frequently elsewhere, either siiryeva or stiryam va.
e. téna may be either masculine, referring to the divinity in‘st. 4, or neuter, agreeing with brahma, ‘ charm,’
IV, 22. COMMENTARY TO PAGE II5.
The hymn is employed twice in the so-called ragakarmaxi,
‘the royal practices, Kaus.14-17. The first is characterised
by the scholiasts, Kesava and Sayama, as a battle-charm
"In RV. I, 29, 3 the two messengers (dogs) of Yama are per- sonified as females.
1v, 22. Commentary. 405
(gayakarma, samgramagayartham), and its rather colourless proceedings are as follows: 14, 24. ‘While reciting IV, 22 and 23 he performs the ceremonies which culminate in the presentation (of the bow to the king).’ These are described in Sitras 8-11 of the same chapter, to wit: 8. ‘An oblation of ghee and grits is poured out. 9. Upon a fire made of bows a bow is laid on as a fagot. 10. Like- wise an arrow (is laid on) upon a fire made of arrows. 11. The bow (of the king), smeared with the dregs of the ghee, is presented to him.’
The othe: performance, Kaus. 17, 28-9, is part of the consecration of a chief ruler (ekaraga, Kaus. 14, 11; cf. ekavvisha in our hymn, sts. 1, 5, 6,7). The special solem- nities of the consecration have been absolved, but every morning the royalty of the king has to be renewed, to wit: 28. ‘ Every morning the hymn IV, 22 (or its first stanza?) is recited to the king (by the purohita, the house-priest). 2g. They (the king and the purohita) then perform the above-mentioned pouring of water (each into a vessel), and the exchange (of the vessels).’ This refers to Sadtras 4 and 5 of the same chapter; cf. the introduction to IV, 8, and Professor Weber’s discussion of the passage in his treatisc, Uber die Kénigsweihe, p. 140 (Transactions of the Royal Prussian Academy, 1893). The hymn, further, is one of a cycle (gaza) devoted to the gain of royal power (rash¢ra- samvarga) grouped together in the indramahotsava, Ath. Paris. 19, 1 (cf. Kaus. 140, 6, note). See also Ath. Paris. 4, 1 and 16. The fanciful analysis of the hymn by the Anukramavi may be seen in Grill’s introduction.
The hymn appears again in Tait. Br. II, 4, 7, 7 ff.; it
has been translated by Ludwig, Der Rigveda, III, 457;
Zimmer, 165; Grill, 67, 135 ff.; cf. Hillebrandt’s Veda-
chrestomathie, p. 43.
Stanza l.