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SATAPATHA-BRAHMANA.
sacrificer)1. She, the wife, truly is the hinder part of the sacrifice. 'May the sacrifice go on increasing before me!' thus (she thinks while) he girds her, thinking, 'may she sit thus girt by my sacrifice!'
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13. He girds her with a cord (yoktra): for with a cord (yoktra) they yoke the draught-animal (yogya). Impure indeed is that part of woman which is below the navel; and therewith she will be facing the sacrificial butter: that part of her he thereby conceals with the cord, and only with the pure upper part of her body she then faces the sacrificial butter. This is the reason why he girds the wife 2.
14. He girds her over the garment. Now the garment represents the plants, and (the cord represents) Varuna's noose (raggu): hence he thereby places the plants between (her and the noose), and
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1 The mistress of the house is seated south-west of the Gârhapatya fire [with bent (or raised) knees and her face turned towards north-east]. The Agnidhra then girds her round the waist, outside the garment, with a triple cord of reed-grass (muñga). Kâty. II, 7, 1; and Sâyana on our passage.
According to Taitt. Br. III, 3, 3, 2-3 the symbolical meaning of this act is, that it represents the vratopanayana, or initiation of the wife into the sacred rite. The girding of the wife would thus possess a significance similar to that of the ordinary upanayana, or investiture of the youth with the sacred cord.
The noose (pâ sa) is one of the chief attributes of God Varuna, the symbol of his supreme power and his abhorrence of sin. Thus we read in Atharva-veda IV, 16, 4 seq.: 'And if one were to flee far beyond the sky, one would not escape from king Varuna. From heaven his spies issue forth to this (world), and with their thousand eyes survey the earth. King Varuna sees all that happens between heaven and earth and beyond them: the very twinklings of the eyes of men are numbered by him. . . . May all those baleful nooses of thine, O Varuna, that are thrown sevenfold and three
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| SR No. | 007674 |
| Book Title | Dhammapada |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Max Muller |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1881 |
| Total Pages | 2540 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 45 MB |