Satapatha Bramhana Part 03

SR No.: 007679
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2382
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 45 MB

Page 986

V, 22. COMMENTARY.
443
therefore designated as takmanâsana (V, 4, 1. 2), and the gangida, an unexplained member of the Indian flora'. In V, 22 the gods, Agni, Soma, Varuna, the Ådityas, and the deified press-stones (pressing the soma) are appealed to for help. Cf. in addition to the authorities mentioned above, Edmund Hardy, Die Vedisch-Brahmanische Periode, p. 198, and, for detailed descriptions of fever and its treatment in the medical Sâstras, Wise, Hindu System of Medicine, p. 219 ff.
The treatment of AV. V, 22 in the ritual, Kaus. 29, 18. 19, is as follows :'(The priest) gives (the patient) gruel made of roasted grain to drink. The dregs (of the gruel) he pours from a copper vessel over the head (of the patient) into fire derived from a forest-fire?' The treatment is intensely symbolical, being based upon the attractio similium, with a touch of homoeopathy. The roasted grain represents heat and therefore fever; the copper vessel (lohitapâtra), with the other meaning of lohita, 'red,' in mind, again suggests heat and fever, and the forest fire, dávágni, figures in preference to ordinary fire because it is occasioned by lightning, and lightning is conceived as the cause of fever and its related diseases. See our treatment of AV. I, 12, and cf. Seven Hymns of the Atharva-veda, Amer. Journ. Phil. VII, 469 ff. (p. 4 ff. of the reprint). Note also the very parallel treatment which the fever patient undergoes at the hands of Kausika in 25, 26, in connection with AV.I, 25.
The hymn has been translated many times, either entirely or in part. See Roth, I. c., p. 38; Grohmann, Indische
Darila at Kaus. 8, 15, gangidos rgunah akala iti dâkshinâtyah. Kesava, ib., gangido vârânasyam prasiddhah. It is the name of a tree in any case; see XIX, 34 and 35.
• Kausika's language is of the most concise Sätra sort : 18 ... lâgân pâyayati. 19. dâve lohitapâtrena mürdhni sampâtân ânayati.
The translation above is with the help of Darila. The employment of the dregs after the act of âplavana is technical; see the Paribhâsha-sūtra Kaus. 7, 15. For the sampâta, see also Grihyasamgraha I, 113.
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