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 878

284
VEDIC HYMNS.
Verse 7. Såti and råtí are used on purpose, the former meaning the acquisition or conquest of good things, the latter the giving away of them. The onslaught of the Maruts is first described as violent and crushing; their liberality in giving away what they have conquered, chiefly rain, is represented as delightful, like the gifts of a liberal worshipper. Then follows prithugráyi asuryễva gáñgati. Here asurya reminds us of the asurya in the preceding hymn, where it occurred as an epithet of Rodasi, the lightning. Prithugráyî, wide-spreading, seems to apply best to the rain, that is, the rati, though it might also apply to the lightning. However, the râti is the storm with rain and lightning, and I therefore propose to read gagghatî for gáñgati. Gañg is a root which occurs here only, and gaggh too is a root which is unknown to most students of Sanskrit. Benfey, to whom we owe so much, was the first to point out that gaggh, which Yaska explains by to make a noise and applies to murmuring waters, is a popular form of gaksh, to laugh, a reduplicated form of has. He shows that ksh is changed into kkh in akkhå for aksha, and into gh and ggh, in Pali and Prakrit, e.g. ghå for ksha. The original form gaksh, to laugh, occurs I, 33, 7. tvám etấn rudatáh gákshatah ka áyodhayah, thou foughtest them, the crying and the laughing.
That the lightning is often represented as laughing we see from the very next verse, áva smayanta vidyútah, the lightnings laughed down; and the very fact that this idea occurs in the next verse confirms me in the view that it was in the poet's mind in the preceding one. See also I, 23, 12. haskårát vidyútah pári átah gåtáh avantu nah marútah mrilayantu nah.
In the only other passage where gang occurs, VIII, 43, 8, arkishå gañganâbhávan, applied to Agni, admits of the same correction, gagghanabhávan, and of the same translation, 'laughing with splendour.'
Benfey's objection to the spelling of gaghgh with two
a Gött. Nachr., 1876, No. 13, s. 324.
Digitized by
Digitized by Google