Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/225

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55
TRANSLATION AND NOTES. BOOK II.
-ii. 12
uṣṇih, and bṛhatī, eighty of each, spoken of in AA. i. 4. 3—simply because they are the only such groups that he finds mentioned elsewhere; the number is probably taken indefinitely, as an imposing one.


5. O heaven-and-earth, attend (ā-dīdhī) ye after me; O all ye gods, take ye hold (ā-rabh) after me; O Angirases, Fathers, soma-feasting (somyá), let the doer of abhorrence (apakāmá) meet with (ā-ṛ) evil.

Ppp. reads in a dīdhyatām ⌊cf. Bloomfield, AJP. xvii. 417⌋, and in d pāpasāricchetv ap-. The comm. does not recognize dīdhī as different from dīdī, rendering ādīpte bhavatam. ⌊In a, the accent-mark under -vī is missing.⌋


6. Whoso, O Maruts, thinks himself above us, or whoso shall revile our incantation (bráhman) that is being performed—for him let his wrongdoings be burnings (tápus); the sky shall concentrate its heat (sam-tap) upon the bráhman-hater.

The verse is RV. vi. 52. 2, with sundry variants. At the beginning, RV. has the better reading áti vā; in b, hriyámāṇaṁ nínitsāt; for d, brahmadvíṣam abhí táṁ çocatu dyāúḥ. Ppp. follows RV. in d (but with çoca for çocatu); in c it reads vrajanāni. The comm. renders vṛjinā́ni falsely by varjakāni bādhakāni.


7. Seven breaths, eight marrows: them I hew [off] for thee with [my] incantation; thou shalt go to Yama's seat, messengered by Agni, made satisfactory.

The last pāda is xviii. 2. 1 (RV. x. 14. 13) d. All our mss. and about half of SPP's have in a majñás (for majjñás); yet SPP. adopts in his text the reading manyás, because given by the comm., which explains it artificially as for dhamanyas, and signifying "a sort of vessels situated in the throat"; no such word appears to be known elsewhere in the language, and some of the mss. have in other passages of the text manyas for majñás. Our Bp. gives áyā at beginning of c; the word is translated above as ⌊áyās⌋, subjunctive of i with doubled subjunctive-sign (see my Skt. Gram. §560 e), or of its secondary root-form ay; the comm. takes it from , which makes him no difficulty, since in his view imperfect and imperative are equivalent, and he declares it used for yāhi. Ppp. reads for c yamasya gacha sādanam. ⌊In many parts of India today and ny are phonetically equivalent. Cf. SPP's mss. for ix. 5. 23.⌋


8. I set thy track in kindled Jātavedas; let Agni dispose of (? viṣ) the body; let speech go unto breath (? ásu).

The verse is in part obscure; the comm. sets it in connection with one of the details of the Kāuç. ceremony: "I set or throw in the fire the dust from thy track combined with chopped leaves: i.e. I roast it in the roaster; let Agni, through this dust entering thy foot, pervade or burn thy whole body"; he takes ásu as simply equivalent to prāṇa, and explains: sarvendriyavyavahāraçūnyo bhavatu, become incapable of acting for the senses: i.e. become mere undifferentiated breath—which is perhaps the true meaning. ⌊Quite otherwise A. Kaegi—citation in Bloomfield, p. 294.⌋ The Anukr. apparently expects us to resolve ā́ at the beginning into a-ā́. Ppp. has in a ā dadāmi, and for d imaṁ gachatu te vasu. The last two verses are so discordant in style and content, as well as in meter, with