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 776

182
VEDIC HYMNS.
NOTES. A critical examination of Professor von Roth's remarks on this hymn, together with some supplementary notes of my own, will be found in the Preface to this volume.
According to the Anukramanikà this hymn is a dialogue between Agastya, the Maruts, and Indra. A careful consideration of the hymn would probably have led us to a similar conclusion, but I doubt whether it would have led us to adopt the same distribution of the verses among the poet, the Maruts, and Indra, as that adopted by the author of the Anukramanika. He assigns the first two verses to Indra, the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth to the Maruts, the fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth to Indra, and the three concluding verses to Agastya. I think that the two verses in the beginning, as well as the three concluding verses, belong certainly to Agastya or to whoever else the real performer of the sacrifice may have been. The two verses in the beginning cannot be ascribed to Indra, who, to judge from his language, would never say:
By what strong desire may we arrest the Maruts?' It might seem, in fact, as if the three following verses too should be ascribed to the sacrificer, so that the dialogue between Indra and the Maruts would begin only with the sixth verse. The third verse might well be addressed to Indra by the sacrificer, and in the fourth verse we might see a description of all that he had done for Indra. What is against this view, however, is the phrase prábhritah me ádrih. If used by the sacrificer, it might seem to mean, 'my stone, i.e. the stone used for squeezing the Soma, has been brought forth. But though Professor Roth assigns this meaning to prábhrita in our passage, I doubt whether, in connection with ádri, or with vágra, prábhrita can mean anything but hurled. Thus we read :
I, 61, 12. asmaí It ûm (Iti) prá bhara-vritrāya vágram. Hurl thou, Indra, the thunderbolt against this Vritra. V, 32, 7. yát îm vágrasya prá-bhritau dad&bha.
When Indra conquered him in the hurling of the thunderbolt.
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