We may fairly question whether 'seat' means here 'seat on horseback.' The comm. explains asādās by açvādiyānarahitāḥ padātayaḥ, and sādinas by açvārūḍhāḥ 'mounted on horses.'
25. Let the army of our enemies lie with thousand corpses (-kúṇapa) in the conflict of weapons, pierced through, cut to pieces (?).
The obscure kakajā́kṛtā at the end is guessed by the comm. to mean kutsitajananā vilolajananā vā kṛtā; he attempts no etymology, but evidently sees in it the root jā. In a he has the strange reading senām for çetām.
26. Let the eagles (suparṇá) eat him, pierced to the vitals, crying loudly, lying crushed, the evil-minded one—what enemy of ours wishes to fight against this opposing offering.
The translation implies the emendation (which Ludwig's version also makes) of suparṇāís to suparṇā́s in a. The comm. takes it as qualifying çarāis understood and adjunct of marmāvídham: 'pierced etc. by well-feathered arrows.' In the irregular meter of the first line, the division is perhaps best made before adantu; a small minority of SPP's mss. so regard it, and accent adántu accordingly, and he follows them in his text; our Bp. puts its pāda-division after adantu, and, with one other ms., leaves the word without accent. ⌊See Henry's elaborate conjectures, p. 172: marmāvídho róruvataḥ suparṇā́ gaṇāír adantu mṛditám çáyānam. The other versions imply mármaviddham, and Bloomfield expressly conjectures marmaviddhám, overlooking the accent; but the comm. to Prāt. iv. 68 quotes marmāvídham as an instance of non-separation in pada-text.⌋
27. [The offering] which the gods follow (anu-sthā), of which there is no failure—with that let Indra, Vṛitra-slayer, slay, with the three-jointed thunderbolt.
⌊Here ends the fifth anuvāka, with 2 hymns and 53 verses. The quoted Anukr. says, referring to this last hymn, antyo viṅçatiḥ sapta cā ’parāḥ.⌋
⌊The sum of the verses for hymns 1-2 and 4-10 is (68 + 189 =) 257. Reckoning hymn 3 (with the Berlin ed.) as of 56 vss., we get for the book (257 + 56 =) 313: and this is the summation given by codex I. On the other hand, reckoning hymn 3 as of (31 + 72 + 7 =) 110 vss. (see pp. 632, 628), we get for the book (257 + 110 =) 367. But the summation given by four of W's mss. (including P.W.B.) is 365. How to account for the discrepancy I do not see. One ms. sums up the last anuvāka as 51 (i.e. 26 + 25?—instead of 26 + 27 = 53) verses, and 10. 17 is indeed a galita-verse; but the Old Anukr. reckons hymn 10 as 27, not 25.⌋
⌊Three or four mss. sum up the sūktas "of both kinds" as 12.⌋
⌊Here ends the twenty-fifth prapāṭhaka.⌋
