Questions of King Milinda Part 01

SR No.: 007681
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1890
Total Pages: 2695
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 47 MB

Page 1463

XX
HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
word ångirasa the fact that the Vishnu-purâna (Wilson's translation, V, 383) and the Bhavishya-purâna count the Angirasa as one of the four Vedas of the Parsis (Maga), the other three, Vada, Visvavada, and Vidut, also conveying thinly veiled disparagement of the religious books of an exotic religion; cf. Wilson in Reinaud's Mémoire sur l'Inde, p. 394; Ind. Stud. I, 292, note; Weber, Ind. Lit., p. 164, note.
We may then regard it as certain that the words angiras and angirasa are reflected by the ceremonial literature in the sense of abhikära and abhikârika. Far more important is the evidence of certain texts of greater antiquity, and higher dignity, which have occasion to mention the Atharvan incidentally, and enunciate clearly this twofold character of the Veda. They make the very same distinction between atharvan and angiras that appeared above in the ritualistic passage, Vait. Sa. 5, 10 (Gop. Br. I, 2, 18). At Sankli. Sr. XVI, 2, 1 ff., on the occasion of the horse-sacrifice, recitations are made from the ordinary Vedic classes of literature, the rikah, yagûmshi, sâmâni, and also the remoter literary categories which the Brahmanas and Sätras report, with great unanimity and considerable variety, as having been in existence in their time: the itihasa (akhyana), purâna, sarpavidyâ, &c. The Atharvan figures immediately after the Rik and Saman, and that too twice, in its double character as Atharyan and Angiras, and, what is more important, bheshagam, i.e. remedial charms, are recited from the Atharvan; ghoram, i.e. sorcery, âbhikârikam, from the Angiras ? The commentator regards bheshagam and ghoram as distinct works, bhesha gagranthasya stharvanikanam ... ghoram atharvano granthah. The same subject is treated in almost identical terms in Åsv. Sr. X, 7, 1 ff.: again àtharvano vedah and angiraso vedah are treated individually, and again the former is correlated with bheshagam, the latter with ghoram 3. Once more this theme is handled
Cf. Max Müller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 40 ff. . atharvavedo vedah so syam iti bheshagam nigadet ... angiraso vedo vedah so syam iti ghoram nigadet.
Scholiast, ghoram iti abbikârådipratipadakam ity arthah. Cf. RV. X, 34, 14, ma do ghoréna karatá s bhi dhrishnú.
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