emend to çitipad-avi-devatyam or else as above?—Weber entitles the hymn "Abfindung mit dem Zoll im Jenseits."⌋
Translated: Ludwig, p. 375; Weber, xvii. 302; Griffith, i. 124.
1. What the kings share among themselves—the sixteenth of what is offered-and-bestowed—yon assessors (sabhāsád) of Yama: from that the white-footed sheep, given [as] ancestral offering (svadhā́), releases.
By this offering, one is released from the payment otherwise due to Yama's councilors on admission into the other world: the ideas are not familiar from other parts of the mythology and ritual. ⌊But cf. Hillebrandt, Ved. Mythol. i. 511; Weber, Berliner Sb., 1895, p. 845.⌋ The comm. explains thus: ubhayavidhasya karmaṇaḥ ṣoḍaçasaṁkhyāpūrakaṁ yat pāpam puṇyarāçer vibhaktaṁ kurvanti, as if the sixteenth were the share of demerit to be subtracted from the merit, and cleansed away (pari-çodhay-) by Yama's assistants, etc. In c he reads muñcatu for -ti; çitipād in d he renders çvetapād. The last pāda lacks a syllable, unless we make a harsh resolution. Our text reads in b -pūrttásya; ⌊for consistency, delete one t⌋.
2. All desires (kā́ma) it fulfils, arising (ā-bhū), coming forth (pra-bhū), becoming (bhū); [as] fulfiller of designs, the white-footed sheep, being given, is not exhausted (upa-das).
The precise sense of the three related participles in b is very questionable (Weber renders "da seiend, tüchtig, und kräftig"; Ludwig, "kommend, entstehend, lebend"); the comm. says "permeating, capable ⌊of rewarding⌋, increasing."
3. He who gives a white-footed sheep commensurate (sámmita) with [his] world, he ascends unto the firmament, where a tax is not paid (kṛ) by a weak man for a stronger.
"Commensurate": i.e., apparently, "proportioned in value to the place in the heavenly world sought by the giver" (so Weber also); R. suggests "analogous (as regards the white feet) with the world of light that is aspired to"; the comm., on his part, gives two other and discordant explanations: first, lokyamānena phalena samyakparicchinnam, amoghaphalam; second, anena bhūlokena sadṛçam, bhūlokavat sarvaphalapradam: both very bad. For nā́ka he gives the derivation na-a-kam 'non-un-happiness, which he repeats here and there in his expositions. The translation implies in c the reading çulkás, which (long ago conjectured by Muir, OST. v. 310) is given by SPP. on the authority of all his mss., and also by the comm., and is undoubtedly the true text. Only one of our mss. (Kp.) has been noted as plainly reading it; but the mss. are so careless as to the distinction of lk and kl that it may well be the intent of them all. The comm. paraphrases it as "a kind of tax (kara-) that must be given to a king of superior power by another king of deficient power situated on his frontier." As pointed out by Weber, the item of description is very little in place here, where the sacrifice is made precisely in satisfaction of such a tax. ⌊W's prior draft reads "to a stronger."—Note that SPP's oral reciters gave çulkás.⌋
4. The white-footed sheep, accompanied with five cakes, commensurate with [his] world, the giver lives upon, [as] unexhausted in the world of the Fathers.
That is ⌊the giver lives upon the sheep⌋, as an inexhaustible supply for his needs. The comm. explains d by vasvādirūpam prāptānāṁ somalokākhye sthāne.
