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568
HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
knowing its contents. Then the patient must pronounce the lord's prayer nine times on nine days before sunrise. On the ninth day he must go with prayer to the river, cast the bag into the water, and return home praying and without turning his face.'
The hymn has been translated and expounded by Grohmann, 1. c., pp. 386, 414; Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 381; and Victor Henry, Le livre VII de l'Atharva-véda, pp. 45, 124. The hymn is quoted also as one of the takmanasanagana in the Ganamálâ, Ath. Paris. 32, 7 (Kaus. 26, 1, note).
Stanza 1. As the verse stands the first half is hopeless prose, and yet the second half is a good gagati-pâda. Henry, l. c., p. 125, makes the exceedingly ingenious and plausible suggestion that the first half consisted originally also of two gagati-pâdas, and stood,
námo rûráya kyávanâya dhrishnave,
námo růraya kódanâya dhrishnáve. These were then by a species of haplology? fused, so as to yield námo růráya kyávanâya kódanâya dhrishnáve. Still we would not go as far as Henry himself does, and make this reconstruction the basis of a translation, especially as either the word kyávanâya, or kodanaya (more probably the latter), might have entered the text as a gloss. The expulsion of either yields a good gagatî-pâda, and the tradition may at any rate be respected as long as it does not interfere with good sense.
8. For rûráya, see the note to V, 22, 10 a, and cf. I, 25,4 ; for kodanâya, Shankar Pandit with Sâyana and some MSS. reads nódanâya.
b. pūrvakâmakrítvane is obscure. The Pet. Lexs. translate it, 'alte wünsche erfüllend ;' Grohmann and Zimmer, nach altem triebe thätig.' Grohmann supposes that the
For haplology in Vedic Sanskrit, see the author in the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society for 1893 (Journal, vol. xvi, p. xxxiv).
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