20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

722 SHILPA SUMANTGONDA (1980:396) interprets the rite as follows:She is led out of her house with 14.1.20 (let Bhaga lead you...), bound toa yoke-hole in order to be purified with 40 (and 41) and 14.2.69; gold isfastened to her forehead, water sprinkled through the yoke-hole.It seems that Kauśika’s complicated formulation of this particularsūtra 76.12 has made the scholars think that the bride is actually tied tothe yoke-hole. Instead, we arrive at the correct interpretation of the rite, byconstruing the sūtra in a proper manner as follows:dakṣiṇasyāṁ yugadury uttarasmin yugatardmani hiraṇyaṁ darbheṇavigrathya lalāṭe saṁstabhya śaṁ ta iti japati / – On the right yoke-end 2in the left yoke-hole, having tied [a piece of] gold with a grass-bladeand having fastened [it] on [bride's] fore-head, he murmurs śaṁ te (ŚS14.1.40), “[Let the gold be] auspicious for you”.Probably scholars thought that there should be two separate objectsfor two absolutives in the sūtra, vigrathya and saṁstabhya and since onlyone object hiraṇyam, a piece of gold, is mentioned in the sūtra, they mighthave imagined the second object as `bride'! It would have been absolutelyjustifiable to supply such a word, if Kauśika would have intended that andif this idea of tying the bride to the yoke-hole with a blade of grass wouldhave been actually in practice in the Atharvavedic tradition.It seems that the scarcity of the commentaries on the KauśS is the reasonfor such misinterpretation by the scholars. The only existing commentaryon the text, the Dārilabhāṣya is running upto the kaṇḍikā 48, that implies,is not available for this section of the text. However, if we examine theavailable ancillary literature of the Atharvavedic tradition, we arrive at thecorrect interpretation of the sūtra. The practice of tying a piece of gold in theyoke-hole and making it touch the bride’s forehead, pouring water throughthe yoke-hole over that piece of gold and letting it flow down towards thebride, who is sitting below the yoke, have continued in the Atharvavedatradition and have found a place for discussion in the ancillary texts as well.1.3. The description of the rite in the ancillary texts of the AtharvavedatraditionFirst, I present below the concerned passages from the ancillary textsbased on the KauśS.2For the technical terms of various parts of the yoke, see SPARREBOOM 1985.