2 The favourite place to divest oneself of evil influences; cf. Kaus. 27, 7, in the introduction to II, 10; Kaus. 30, 18, in the introduction to VI, 26, &c. See in general Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 267, and the index under ‘ kreuzweg.’
* For the sieve, see the introduction to VI, 26.
520 HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
which is hypermetric, and seems to suggest a slurred
reading of the five syllables preceding the caesura, perhaps
ém yo baddhak for ayam yo baddhak (cf. Avestan aém).
b. baddhaz and styatas# may refer either simply, or with
double entente to the mental condition of the patient,
‘bound and checked by the fetters of the dementia.’
e. Zimmer, p. 393, ‘dann wird er dir deinen antheil
darbringen.’ But adhi kar does not seem to bear any such
interpretation.
a. Zimmer renders devainasa by ‘ sin against the gods;’ Ludwig, ‘von befleckung (where is there a corresponding word in the original ?), siinde gegen die gétter, der wan- sinnig.’ It does not seem that the gods madden him that offends against them, a mere sight of them suffices: see Mahabh. III, 14501, ‘the man who, awake or asleep, beholds the gods quickly becomes mad ; that is known as possession by the gods, Our translation, too, preserves the parallelism between the first two Pddas. Indeed, devainasa seems to mean outright ‘the sins committed by the gods.’ See the introduction to VI, 112, and Proc. Amer. Or. Soc., March, 1894 (Journal, vol. xvi), p. cxix ff., and cf. especially Apast. Sr. XIII, 17,,03 Pagk. Brod oa ee (devakvztasyaixnasaz). Thus also Sdyava, devakritam enas...devakrztat pdpad upaghatad unmaditam. Cf, perhaps, also VIII, 7, 28.
b. Read yathanunmadits for yada4nunmadité : the corrup- tion is due to1d.
a. At AV. II, 2, 5 the Apsaras are designated as the ‘mind-bewildering’ wives of the Gandharvas ; at Tait. S. III, 4, 8, 4, ‘the Gandharvas and Apsaras render mad him that is mad.’ In the sequel of the latter passage it is stated that it is necessary to quiet them (samayati, cf. st. 2a). The expression punar da is used in the sense of ‘ give back, give up possession,’ rather than in the derived sense, ‘ make well, restore.’ All this seems to be well founded in the early Hindu view; in RV. X, 11, 2 the Gandharvi and the:
Vi, 112. Commentary. R21
woman of the waters (Aapyad ydshav4) perform a similar service: ‘And the Gandharvi, the woman of the water, spake; when the reeds rustle may she protect my mind ?.’ 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 Purdravas (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, ‘ Trita, the scapegoat of the gods.’ Without the light of the conceptions there alluded to the hymns are hardly intelligible *, 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. III, 2, 8, 9 ff. the same story is told with
1 Cf. Pischel, Vedische Studien, I, 183.
* Cf. Contributions, Third Series, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. XV, 163; Fifth Series, ib, XVI, 3.
522 HYMNS OF THE ATHAKVA-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 Kase. S. XXXI, 7; Kap. S. XLVII, 7 (cf. also Sat. Br. I, 2, 2, 8; Ka¢y. Sr. II, 5, 26; Mahidhara to Vag. S. I, 23; Apast. Sr. I, 25, 15); and similar lists of sinful personages are to be quoted from a variety of Sitras, and later Smarta-texts; see Delbriick, 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 (énas); 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 Visvarapa, 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, 1, 1-3 ;: Tait. Bro 1y7,.1,.9. 84. Pagk. Br. XH1Dy 6.8, eee Maitr. S. IV, 3,43; 5, 6), and they have given rise to the notion of misdeeds on the part of the gods in general (devainasa, AV. VI, 111, 3; X, 1, 12). It was natural, now, that some personage closely associated with Indra— a personage, moreover, who could be construed as syb- 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 rdle of a demiurge, being, as it were, the Indo-Iranian
Vi, 112. Commentary. 523
Hercules (cf. the Avestan Thraétaona Athwya) ; whether we regard him as Indra’s lieutenant (see the passages of the RV. just cited); or whether we follow Bergaigne, La Religion Védique, 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, 113 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, 112 and 113 are embedded in Kaus. 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, 112 and 113 (the performing priest) ties fetters of mu#ga-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 Kaus. 7, 4, note).
The treatment of the Kausika embraces but one aspect of the hymn, in employing it in connection with the ex-
? Darila, ‘the younger brother along with the unmarried older brother. Kesava 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 Delbriick, |. 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 Kesava’s mind; see the foot-note. Further, the text of both hymns (VI, 112, 3; 113, 2) states distinctly that the sins in question shall be wiped off upon the abor- tionist, the bhrdzahan, whose crime figures as a most shocking one at the end of the lists. This indicates that the entire list of sins is inthe mind of the poet, even though he intends to direct his charm against some special part of them. Finally, the expression dvadasadha in VI, 113, 3, refers, in my opinion, again to the list of crimes which are stated variously as from g—i1 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, III, 469, 444; Grill’, 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 Védique, p. 154. Ludwig intro- duces VI, 112 with the caption ‘ Heirat. Fir vater mutter sohn,’ and defines it (I. c., p. 470) as follows: ‘Der bruder der vor seinem Altern geheiratet hat, oder (so the text) der altere, der den jiingern frither hat heiraten lassen, hat dadurch trockenheit verursacht. Er wird gebunden, seine frau, sein kind, bisz der regen ihn erlést.. 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 Anukramazi defines VI, 112 as Agneyam; VI, 113 as paushvam.
a, b. Our reference of the pronoun aydm 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 iydm (sc. gr&hiZ). Both Ludwig and Grill, moreover, refer gyesh¢kam 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, ‘releasesthe entire family from the consequences of the sin committed by a single member.’ The point of the hymn is stated in the first Pada, and their rendering of gyesht#am causes them to miss it}. |
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 apart. 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 énamsi sisratho vishvag agne (RV. IV, 12, 5).
e. 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 Kausika 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,
24, 1.