Atharva-Veda Samhita/Book III/Hymn 11
11. For relief from disease, and for long life.
[Brahman and Bhṛgvan̄giras.—aṣṭarcam. āindrāgnāyuṣyam, yakṣmanāçanadevatyam. trāiṣṭubham: 4. çakvarīgarbhā jagatī; 5, 6. anuṣṭubh; 7. uṣṇigbṛhatīgarbhā pathyāpan̄kti; 8. 3-av. 6-p. bṛhatīgarbhā jagatī.]
The first four verses are found in Pāipp. i., with the bulk of the 4-verse hymns; they are also RV. x. 161. 1-4 (RV. adds a fifth verse, which occurs below as viii. 1. 20). The hymn is used by Kāuç. (27. 32, 33) in a general healing ceremony (without specification of person or occasion; the schol. and comm. assume to add such), and, in company with many others (iv. 13. 1 etc. etc.), in a rite for length of life (58. 11); and it is reckoned to the takmanāçana gaṇa (26. 1, note) and to the āyuṣya gaṇa (54. 11, note; but the comm., ignoring these, counts it as one of the aṅholin̄ga gaṇa). In Vāit. (36. 19), vs. 8 accompanies the setting free of the horse at the açvamedha sacrifice; and the hymn (the edition says, i. 10. 4; the pratīkas are the same) is employed, with ii. 33 etc., in the puruṣamedha (38. 1).—⌊See also W's introduction to ii. 33.⌋
Translated: Weber, xvii. 231; Griffith, i. 95; Bloomfield, 49, 341.—In part also by Roth, Zur Litteratur und Geschichte des Weda, p. 42.
1. I release thee by oblation, in order to living, from unknown yákṣma and from royal yákṣma; if now seizure (gráhi) hath seized him, from it, O Indra-and-Agni, do ye release him.
RV. inserts vā after yádi in c. Ppp. has, in the second half-verse, grāhyā gṛhīto yady eṣa yatas tata ind-. The comm. explains rājayakṣma as either "king of yakṣmas" or else "the y. that seized king Soma first," quoting for the latter TS. ii. 5. 65 ⌊see references in Bloomfield's comment⌋. The first pāda is jagatī.
2. If of exhausted life-time, or if deceased, if gone down even to the presence (antiká) of death, him I take from the lap of perdition; I have won (spṛ) him for [life] of a hundred autumns.
The translation implies in d áspārṣam, which is the reading of our edition, supported by RV., and also by the comm. (= prabalaṁ karomi!), and two of SPP's mss. that follow the latter; the áspārçām of nearly all the mss. (hence read by SPP.), and of Ppp., can be nothing but a long-established blunder. Ppp. has at the beginning yad ukharāyur y-. ⌊At ii. 14. 3 SPP. used the "long ſ" to denote the kṣāipra circumflex; with equal reason he might use it here for the praçliṣṭa of nī̀ta = ní-ita.⌋
3. With an oblation having a thousand eyes, a hundred heroisms, a hundred life-times, have I taken him, in order that Indra may lead him unto autumns, across to the further shore of all difficulty (duritá).
RV. has in a çatáçāradena for çatávīryeṇa, and makes much better sense of c, d by reading çatám for índras, and índras for áti (it also has imám for enam).
4. Live thou increasing a hundred autumns, a hundred winters, and a hundred springs; a hundred to thee [may] Indra, Agni, Savitar, Brihaspati [give]; with an oblation of a hundred life-times have I taken him.
Our text, in the second half-verse, ingeniously defaces the better meter and sense given by RV., which reads indrāgnī́ for ta índro agníḥ in c, and ends with havíṣe ’mám púnar duḥ. The verse is fairly correctly defined by the Anukr., its c having 14 syllables (çakarī), and making the whole number 47 syllables (jagatī less 1).
5. Enter in, O breath-and-expiration, as two draft-oxen a pen (vrajá); let the other deaths go away (ví), which they call the remaining hundred.
In this verse, as in the preceding and in vs. 7 and elsewhere, SPP. makes the indefensible combination n ch, instead of ñ ch, as the result of mutual assimilation of n and ç ⌊cf. note to i. 19. 4⌋.
⌊As to the "one hundred and one deaths," cf. viii. 2. 27; xi. 6. 16; i. 30. 3; ékaçata in Index; and the numbers in the notable passage, xix. 47. 3 ff.; Kuhn's most interesting Germanic parallels, KZ. xiii. 128 ff.; Wuttke, Deutscher Volksaberglaube2, 301, 335; Hopkins, Oriental Studies...papers read before the Oriental Club of Philadelphia, 1888-1894, p. 152; Zimmer, p. 400. Cf. also the words of the statute, 18 Edward I., §4, concerning the "Fine of Lands," "unless they put in their claim within a year and a day ."⌋
6. Be ye just here, O breath-and-expiration; go ye not away from here; carry his body, his limbs, unto old age again.
At the end of b, the comm. reads javam (= çīghram, akāle) instead of yuvám, and two or three of SPP's mss., as often, follow him.
7. Unto old age do I commit thee; unto old age do I shake thee down (ni-dhū); may old age, excellent, conduct thee; let the other deaths go away, which they call the remaining hundred.
The Anukr. scans the verse as 9 + 8: 7 + 8 + 8 = 40, not admitting any resolution in c.
8. Old age hath curbed (abhi-dhā) thee, as it were a cow, an ox, with a rope; the death that curbed thee, when born, with easy fetter—that Brihaspati released for thee, with the (two) hands of truth.
The verb-forms represent the noun abhidhā́nī 'halter, or bridle, or rope for confining and guiding.' ⌊A case of "reflected meaning": discussed, Lanman, Transactions of the Am. Philol. Association, vol. xxvi, p. xiii (1894). Cf. note to iv. 18. 1.⌋ As in many other cases, the comm. renders the aorist ahita (for adhita) as an imperative, baddhaṁ karotu. On account of jāyamānam in d (virtually 'at thy birth') Weber entitles the hymn "on occasion of difficult parturition," which is plainly wrong. Perhaps it is for the same reason that the comm. regards it as relating to a child, or to a person diseased from improper copulation. In our text, at the beginning, read abhí (an accent-sign lost under a-). There is no bṛhatī element in the verse.