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 723

NOTES. 1, 85, 1.
I 29
together, it may in our passage have retained the sense of yoke-fellow (rúCuyos), and be intended as an adjective to gánayah, wives. There is at least one other passage where this meaning would seem to be more appropriate, viz.
VIII, 20, 23. yayám sakhayah saptayah.
You (Maruts), friends and followers ! or you, friends and comrades!
Here it is hardly possible to assign to sápti the sense of horse, for the Maruts, though likened to horses, are never thus barely invoked as saptayah!
If then we translate, 'Those who glance forth like wives and yoke-fellows,' i.e. like wives of the same husband, the question still recurs how the simile holds good, and how the Maruts rushing forth together in all their beauty can be compared to wives. In answer to this we have to bear in mind that the idea of many wives belonging to one husband (sapatni) is familiar to the Vedic poet, and that their impetuously rushing into the arms of their husbands, and appearing before them in all their beauty, are frequent images in their poetry. In such phrases as pátim ná gánayah and gánayah ná gárbham, the ganis, the wives or mothers, are represented as running together after their husbands or children. This impetuous approach the poet may have wished to allude to in our passage also, but though it might have been understood at once by his hearers, it is almost impossible to convey this implied idea in any other language.
Wilson translates : 'The Maruts, who are going forth, decorate themselves like females : they are gliders (through the air), the sons of Rudra, and the doers of good works, by which they promote the welfare of earth and heaven. Heroes, who grind (the solid rocks), they delight in sacrifices.'
Ludwig translates: 'Die ganz besonders sich schmücken wie frauen, die renner, zu ihrem zuge,' &c. This is possible, yet the simile sounds somewhat forced.
Note 8. The meaning of this phrase, which occurs very frequently, was originally that the storms by driving away the dark clouds, made the earth and the sky to appear
[32]
K
Digitized by
Digitized by Google