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400
HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
the priests of our school ever had any other text, or, what is more to the point, that the original versifex had composed differently. The merit of the Paippalâda's pasyasi is so obvious that it may be due to a conscious improvement on the part of its author. The metre of the stanza is irregular (Anukramanî, svarâg); the first Pâda is hypercatalectic, the third Pâda may be sustained by reading, with elision and crasis, dívântáriksham for dívam antáriksham. Hillebrandt's suggestion, accepted by Grill, that ád be thrown out seems to me unnecessarily violent.
a. Hillebrandt would restore the Pâda: pásyati práti pasyati; Grill (with the help of the Paippalâda), a pasyasi prá pasyasi, continuing with pasyasi throughout. Sâyana retains the third person, referring the stanza to the person who wears the amulet: he devi sadampushpâkhye oshadhe tvadvikâramanidhârako yam ganas tvatprasâdâd âpasyati âgâmibhayakâranam pratihartum gânâti, ' O goddess plant, sadampushpa by name, this person here, who wears an amulet fabricated out of thee, by thy favour perceives the cause of approaching danger, and knows how to repel it.' The emendation of práti to prá (Grill) is especially undesirable, as the same expression occurs in a closely parallel situation, AV. VII, 13, 2.
b. Grill suspects the second pasyati, and imagines oshadhe in its place.
d. The temptation to emend the vocative devi to the nominative devi is great. The sense then would be that the amulet itself sees all dangers. Grill, as we have seen above, adopts the Paippalâda reading pasyasi, is thus enabled to retain devi, and also obtains essentially the
same sense.
Stanza 2.
a. Read prithvih. The three heavens are well known; see, e. g. AV. V, 4, 3; VI, 95, I; XVIII, 2, 48; XIX, 39, 6 (cf. the note on V, 4, 3). For the three earths see RV. I, 108, 9; II, 27, 8; III, 56, 2; AV. VI, 21, 1, and Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, V, p. 305, note; Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 357; Bergaigne, La Religion Védique, I,
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