23. He who is lord of this that has every (víçva) [kind of] birth, of every stirring thing—to thee being such, O breath, having a quick bow among the unexhausted (? ánya), be homage.
The very rare ánya is rendered, at a venture, with the Pet. Lexx. ⌊see BR. under ányā, and OB. i. 66 a, end⌋; ⌊and the parallelism of the next vs., with its átandra, favors this rendering⌋. The wholly obscure pāda in which it occurs is explained by the comm. to mean prāṇiçarīreṣu kṣipraṁ gacchate vyāpnuvate: he takes ánya from the root an 'breathe,' and -dhanvan from dhav 'go.' Ppp. has no variants to help us.
24. He who is lord of this that has all (sárva) [kinds of] birth, of all that stirs, unwearied, wise by bráhman—let breath go after (anu-sthā) me.
Ppp. has at the end the easier reading mām abhi rakṣatu. ⌊W. interlines "attend" as a rendering of anu-sthā.⌋
25. Upright among the sleeping he wakes; by no means (nanú) does he fall down horizontal (tiryán̄); no one soever has heard of his sleeping among the sleeping.
The comm. reads in a jāgara and understands it as impv. 2d sing. Ppp. has in c ⌊? or in a?⌋ svapneṣu. The combination of suptám and asya seems to make it necessary to take the former in the sense of svapna, or of svāpa, as the comm. glosses it. The activity of the breath while the other powers and senses of the body are asleep is a theme of wonder elsewhere also. For supéṣú in a, read suptéṣu (an accent-mark slipped over the wrong syllable).
26. O breath, turn not about from me; not another than I shalt thou be; like the embryo of the waters, in order to life (jīvás), I bind thee to me, O breath.
The obscure second pāda is by the comm. explained to mean mayā saha tādātmyāpanna eva vartase. Some mss. (including our O.) accent mát both times, and SPP. follows them in his text: compare xii. 3. 46.
⌊The quoted Anukr. says "prāṇāya."⌋
⌊Here ends the second anuvāka, with 2 hymns and 82 verses, according to the count of the Berlin edition: that is 1 paryāya-sūkta with 3 paryāyas and 56 verses and 1 artha-sūkta with 26 verses. But some mss. sum up the anuvāka as containing 136 "verses of both sorts," that is the no avasāna-rcas of our h. 3 (see p. 632, top, and p. 629, top) and the 26 ṛcas of our h. 4.⌋
⌊The following quotation from the Old Anukr. seems to be put after the end of h. 4 as pertaining to the anuvāka: trayas "tasyāu ’dano" bhavet. Does this mean that we have no right to count the "tasyāudana" as less than 3 hymns? Cf. p. 611, ¶ 4.⌋
