Satapatha Bramhana Part 05

SR No.: 007680
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1900
Total Pages: 2017
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 44 MB

Page 980

MANDALA III, HYMN 28.
301
This Sûkta and the following are, as their position at the end of the Anuvâka and the number of their verses show, later additions to the original collection. The 28th hymn contains verses destined for the offerings of sacrificial cakes to Agni at each of the three Savanas. Quite in the same way hymn 52, which also belongs to the later additions, refers to sacrificial cakes offered to Indra. The oblation of such cakes to Indra at each Savana is found also in the later Vedic ritual (comp. Katyayana IX, 9, 2 seq. ; Weber, Indische Studien, X, 369, 376), and several verses of III, 52 are indicated there as Puronuvâkyà verses for those very offerings; see Åsvalâyana Srautasátra V, 4, 2. 3. After each cake-offering to Indra follows the Svishtakrit-oblation to Agni: and for these oblations Åsvalâyana (loc. cit. Sûtra 6) prescribes verses 1, 4, and 5 of our hymn, according to the order of the three Savanas. From the text of the hymn it seems to be evident that verses 1-3 have been composed for the first, verse 4 for the second, and verses 5-6 for the third Savana. With this distribution the change of the metres evidently stands in connection. In accordance with the theories of the later Vedic theologians, we have here the Gâyatrî as the characteristic metre of the first, the Trishtubh of the second, the Gagatî of the third Savana.
Comp. also Åsvalâyana VI, 5, 25, and the very ingenious but at the same time somewhat hazardous observations of Bergaigne, Recherches sur l'Histoire de la Liturgie Védique, 16 seq.
Verse 4. Note 1. The text has vidátheshu. Note 2. Comp. I, 36, 1, note 2.
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