Atharva-Veda Samhita/Book I/Hymn 17

17. To stop the vessels of the body.

[Brahman.—yoṣiddevatyam. ānuṣṭubham: 1. bhurij; 4. 3-p. ārṣī gāyatrī.]

Found in Pāipp. xix. (in the verse-order 3, 4, 1, 2). Used once by Kāuç. (26. 10: the quotation appears to belong to what follows it, not to what precedes), in a remedial rite, apparently for stopping the flow of blood (the comm. says, as result of a knife wound and the like, and also of disordered menses).

Translated: Weber, iv. 411; Ludwig, p. 508; Grill, 16, 76; Griffith, i. 21; Bloomfield, 22, 257.—Cf. Hillebrandt, Veda-Chrestomathie, p. 46.

1. Yon women (yoṣít) that go, veins with red garments, like brotherless sisters (jāmí)—let them stop (sthā), with their splendor smitten.

Ppp. makes yoṣitas and jāmayas change places, and has sarvās (better) for hirās in b. The comm. takes yoṣítas as gen. sing., and hence naturally understands rajovahananāḍyas to be meant in the verse; he renders hirās by sirās; and he explains that brotherless sisters pitṛkule saṁtānakarmaṇe piṇḍadānāya ca tiṣṭhanti. The Anukr. refuses to sanction the contraction -tare 'va in c.

2. Stop, lower one! stop, upper one! do thou too stop, midmost one! if the smallest stops, shall stop forsooth the great tube (dhamáni).

The accent of tíṣṭhati seems to show ca to be the equivalent of cet here.

3. Of the hundred tubes, of the thousand veins, have stopped forsooth these midmost ones; the ends have rested (ram) together.

In d, emendation to ántyās 'the end ones' would be an improvement; but Ppp. also has antās: sakam antā 'raṁsata; its c is corrupt (asthū nibaddhāmāvā); and it inserts te after çatasya in a.

4. About you hath gone (kram) a great gravelly sandbank (dhanū́); stop [and] be quiet, I pray (sú kam).

The comm. sees in dhanū́ only the meaning "bow," and interprets it "bent like a bow": namely, a vessel containing the urine; in sikatās he sees an allusion to the menses, or to gravel in the bladder. Kāuç. (26. 10) speaks of sprinkling on dust and gravel as a means of stanching the flow of blood; more probably, as Weber first suggested, a bag filled with sand was used: in neither case can the menses be had in view. Ppp. reads siktāmayī bunū sthiraç carasthidam. The third pāda is identical with RV. i. 191. 6 d; the comm. (as Sāyaņa to the latter) fails to recognize the root il; and he renders it prerayata, as if root ir were in question.