Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 689

NOTES. I, 38, 15.
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have also tatánat, tatánåma, tatanan, and tatánanta. Tatanah can be addressed either to the host of the Maruts, or to the poet. I take it in the latter sense, for a similar verse occurs VIII, 21, 18. It is said there of a patron that he alone is a king, that all others about the river Sarasvati are only small kings, and the poet adds: 'May he spread like a cloud with the rain,' giving hundreds and thousands (pargányah-iva tatánat hi vrishtyä). Ludwig takes tan in the sense of thundering; thunder like Parganya!
Verse 16. Note 1. It is difficult to find an appropriate rendering for arkin. It means praising, celebrating, singing, and it is in the last sense only that it is applicable to the Maruts. Wilson translates, 'entitled to adoration;' Benfey, 'flaming.' Boehtlingk and Roth admit the sense of flaming in one passage, but give to arkin in this place the meaning of praising. If it simply meant, possessed of arká, i.e. songs of praise, it would be a very lame epithet after panasyú. But other passages, like I, 19, 4; 52, 15, show that the conception of the Maruts as singers was most familiar to the Vedic Rishis (I, 64, 10; Kuhn, Zeitschrift, vol. I, p. 521, note); and arká is the very name applied to their songs (I, 19, 4). In the Edda, too, storm and thunder are represented as a lay, as the wondrous music of the wild hunt. The dwarfs and Elbs sing the so-called Alb-leich which carries off everything, trees and mountains.' See Justi in Orient und Occident, vol. ii, p. 62; Genthe, Windgottheiten, p. 4; 11. There is no doubt therefore that arkin here means musician, and that the arká of the Maruts is the music of the winds.
Note 2. Vriddha, literally grown, is used in the Veda as an honorific epithet, with the meaning of mighty, great, or magnified: III, 32, 7. yágámah ít námaså vriddhám Indram
brihántam rishvám agáram yuvanam. We worship with praise the mighty Indra, the great, the exalted, the immortal, the vigorous.
Here neither is vriddhá intended to express old age,
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