Volume 1 - Sanskrit Web

iv. II- BOOK IV. THE ATHARVA-VEDA-SAKIHITA. 164
things, both what is and what is to be." |_If we pronounce again nadvan, the vs. loses
its bhurij quality. The cadence of b is bad.J
3. Born an Indra among human beings {manusyd), he goes about (car)
shining brightly, a heated hot-drink {gkarmd); he, being one of good
offspring, shall not go in mist {hiddrd) who, understanding [it], shall
not partake of (af )
the draft-ox.
The verse is obscure, and the translation in various points very doubtful. The
second pada is apparently a beginning of the identification of the ox with the gharma,
a sacrificial draught of heated milk, which we find further in vss. 5, 6 ;
he is, since his
kind yield warm milk, as it were an incorporation of that sacrifice. And the second
half-verse is then a promise to whoever shall abstain from using the ox as food. Ppp.
reads esa instead of jatas in a, and sarh^i^anas at end of b. In c, d the comm. reads
sam for san, ud are as two words, and no ' (^tilydt, and of course makes very bad work
of its explanation, finding metempsychosis in sam . . . sarsat (jia samsarati punah
samsaradharman na prapnoW). Gharma he takes first as " blazing sun," and then,
alternatively, in its true sense. There is no other occurrence of an j-aorist from sr ;
and it is altogether against rule and usage to employ a subjunctive and an optative
{aqnlyat) in two coordinate clauses (_this seems to me to be a slip — see Skt. Gram.
§ 575 b ;
and the clauses are hardly coordinatej ; so that the reading is very suspicious.
A few of our mss. (P.M.W.E.) read nd after tiddr^. [_Ludwig conjectures suprayas
for -jas.\
4. The draft-ox yields milk (duh) in the world of the well-done ; the
purifying one fills him up from in front ; Parjanya [is] his streams, the
Maruts his udder, the sacrifice his milk, the sacrificial gift the milking
of
him.
Ppp. appears to have read in b pyayet, which would rectify the meter ; in c it combines
maruto "dho. Pdvamana in b might signify the wind (then purdstdt ' from the
east '?) or soma ;
the comm. takes it as the latter {pavitrena (;odhyamdno ' mrtamayah
somalt) ; and " the sacrifice " in d as " the sava sacrifice now performed." The verse
\0n daksinU,
is rhythmically 2.tristubh with redundant syllables (11-1-13: 12-t-ii =47).
see Bloomfield, AJP. xvii. 408 f.J
5. Of whom the lord of the sacrifice is not master (ff), nor the sacrifice;
not the giver is master of him, nor the acceptor; who is all-conquering,
all-bearing, all-working — tell ye us the hot-drink which [is]
four-footed.
" Which " in d is yatamd, lit. ' which among the many.' The intended answer, of
course, is that this wondrous sacrificial drink is the ox. Ppp. begins c with yo vii;vadrg
vi^vakrd v-. The comm. declares the first half-verse to convey the universal masterhood
and not-to-be-mastered-hood of the ox; m A. gharma is, according to him, "the
blazing sun, which the four-footed one tells us " (brfita is read, but declared equivalent
to brute F).
6. By whom the gods ascended to heaven (svdr), quitting the body,
to the navel of the immortal, by him may we go to the world of the welldone,
desiring glory, by the vow {vratd) of the hot-drink, by penance.