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.
12. Accompanying the building of a house.
[Brahman.—navarcam. çālāsūktam. vāstoṣpatiçālādāivatam. trāiṣṭubham: 2. virāḑjagatī; 3. bṛhatī; 6. çakvarīgarbhā jagatī; 7. ārṣy anuṣṭubh; 8. bhurij; 9. anuṣṭubh.]
