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are personified as primordial powers. There is one hymn (xi. 7) in which even Ucchishṭa (the remnant of the sacrifice) is deified as the Supreme Being; except for its metrical form it belongs to the Brāhmaṇa type of literature.
In concluding this survey of the Atharva-veda, I would draw attention to a hymn to Varuṇa (iv. 16), which, though its last two stanzas are ordinary Atharvan spells for binding enemies with the fetters of that deity, in its remaining verses exalts divine omniscience in a strain unequalled in any other Vedic poem. The following three stanzas are perhaps the best:—
- This earth is all King Varuṇa's dominion,
- And that broad sky whose boundaries are distant.
- The loins of Varuṇa are these two oceans,
- Yet in this drop of water he is hidden.
- He that should flee afar beyond the heaven
- Would not escape King Varuṇa's attention:
- His spies come hither, from the sky descending,
- With all their thousand eyes the earth surveying.
- King Varuṇa discerns all that's existent
- Between the earth and sky, and all beyond them;
- The winkings of men's eyes by him are counted;
- As gamesters dice, so he lays down his statutes.
