Book XV.
⌊The Vrātya.⌋
⌊This fifteenth book is the third book of the third grand division (books xiii.-xviii.) of the Atharvan collection; and (like books xiii. and xiv.) it clearly shows that unity of subject which is the distinguishing characteristic of the books of the division. Books xv. and xvi. are unlike all the others in that they consist exclusively of paryāya-sūktas, the former of 18, and the latter of 9. The book has, I believe, the distinction of being the first book of the Atharva-veda ever translated into an Occidental language: not only a translation of it, but also the original text, was published by Theodor Aufrecht, in the very first part of the first volume of the Indische Studien, pages 121-140, in August, 1849 (title-page, 1850: but see ZDMG. iii., pages 484, 482), some five or six years before the first part of the Berlin edition, the provisional preface of which is dated February, 1855. The bhāṣya is again lacking.⌋
⌊The word vrā́tya is defined by BR. as 'belonging to a roving band (vrā́ta), vagrant; member of a fellowship that stood without the Brahmanical pale.' It is further applied to the son of an uninitiated man (Bāudhāyana, i. [8.] 1616: cf. Manu, x. 20), or also to one who has let the proper time for the sacrament of initiation slip by (Manu, ii. 39). And the MBh., at v. 35. 46 = 1227, classes the vrātya with the offscourings of society, such as incendiaries, poisoners, pimps, adulterers, abortionists, drunkards, and so on.—In the St. Petersburg Lexicon, vi. 1503, BR. express the opinion that the praise of the vrātya in this book is an idealization of the pious vagrant or wandering religious mendicant. In this connection, Weber's History of Indian Lit., p. 112, may be consulted; also Bloomfield's more recent paragraph in his contribution to Bühler-Kielhorn's Grundriss, entitled The Atharvaveda, p. 94.⌋
⌊The Anukr., in its statements as to the "deity" of the book, says adhyātmakam (see p. 773); and the Cūlikā Upanishad (see Deussen's Upanishads, pages 637, 640) reckons the vrātya as one among the many forms in which Brahman is celebrated in the AV., mentioning in the same verse with vrātya (celebrated in AV. xv.) also the brahmacārin and the skambha and the palita (celebrated respectively at AV. xi. 5 and x. 7, 8 and ix. 9), etc.—And this view accords well with the penultimate verse of the fifth prapāṭhaka
769
