15. Let Kaṇva, Kakshīvant, Purumīḍha, Agastya, Çyāvāçva, Sobharī, Archanānas, Viçvāmitra, Jamadagni here, Atri, Kaçyapa, Vāmadeva, aid us.
The comm. amuses himself with giving etymologies for all these names, only passing over Agastya and Sobharī as "evident" (prasiddha).
16. O Viçvāmitra, Jamadagni, Vasishṭha, Bharadvāja, Gotama, Vāmadeva—Atri hath taken (grabh) our çardís with obeisances; ye Fathers of good report, be gracious to us.
The translation implies in d emendation of sú-saṁçāsas to suçaṅsasas ⌊so W's ms.! it must certainly be a double slip for súçaṅsāsas⌋, for which it seems most probably a corruption, and which is read by the comm. ⌊he reads in fact suçaṅsāsas, and understands it as W. does⌋; the only variants in the mss. are súçaṅçāsas ⌊with palatal ç twice⌋ in some of ours (P.M.I.) and one (C.) of SPP's, and the accentuation on the second syllable, -sáṁç-, in a few (including our O.R.T.).* Pítaras in b ought properly to be without accent. ⌊As to what precedes, see the next ¶.⌋ Some of the mss. read çárdir or çárdír. The comm. first identifies the word with chardis, and pronounces it a name for 'house'; then, as alternative, he gets it from root çard and makes çardayati signify balayati; ⌊and, as a final alternative, he regards the word as the name of a Rishi⌋. Neither Kāuç. nor Vāit. makes any use of these two verses. ⌊Weber, Episches im vedischen Ritual, Sb. 1891, p. 787, suggests a special connection of this book xviii. with the Kāuçikan Viçvāmitras.⌋
*⌊The decision here lies between the well-authenticated su-çáṅsa ('of good wishes, kindly': root çaṅs) and the doubtful su-saṁçās ('kindly admonishing,' presumably oxytone: root çās with sam). The former occurs five times in RV. and also at AV. xix. 10. 6. The latter occurs nowhere, unless here, nor does it seem to be apposite in meaning: yet the authority of the mss. and of the çrotriya V. is decidedly in favor of it. No ms. soever actually gives súçaṅsāsas; but the mss. that have the impossible súçaṅçāsas may well be regarded as intending súçaṅsāsas.—Moreover, if the two vocatives stood in the order pítaraḥ su-, I should leave the second one unaccented (Gram. §314 d), as W. suggests; but with the order sú- pít-, the second seems distinctly more independent of the first (Gram. §314 e) and may properly be accented. I would therefore read súçaṅsāṣaḥ pítaraḥ, and render 'O ye kindly ones, ye Fathers!' As for the meaning of suçáṅsa: note that çáṅsa means 'a wish, good or evil,' i.e. not only 'curse,' but also 'blessing,' and is used in these two opposite senses in two contiguous RV. verses, vii. 25. 2, 3; and that, in its good sense, it is pertinent to the Fathers, as at RV. x. 78. 3, pitṝṇā́ṁ ná çáṅsāḥ surātáyaḥ. Note further that 'kindly' accords well with the character of the Fathers as described in RV. x. 15: they bless and help (vss. 5 d, 4 c), and are harmless (1 c, 6 c) and gracious (3 a, 9 c).—That, in such a "pestilent congregation of" sibilants as súçaṅsāsas, a blunder of the tradition is rather to be expected than not, is my opinion: whoso doubts it, let him attempt "with moderate haste" to repeat aloud three times the simple English sentence "she sells sea-shells."⌋
