Grihya Sutras

SR No.: 007685
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1886
Total Pages: 2642
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1285

228
VEDIC HYMNS.
thus showing a transition of meaning from barking, to provoking or attacking. The same root rà explains also the Latin lattare, to bark, allatrare, to assail; and, whatever ancient etymologists may say to the contrary, the Latin latro, an assailer. The old derivation'latrones eos antiqui dicebant, qui conducti militabant, åto this datpelas,' seems to me one of those etymologies in which the scholars of Rome, who had learnt a little Greek, delighted as much as scholars who know a little Sanskrit delight in finding some plausible derivation for any Greek or Latin word in Sanskrit. I know that Curtius (Grundzüge, p. 326) and Corssen (Kritische Nachträge, p. 239) take a different view; but a foreign word, derived from aétpov, pay, hire, would never have proved so fertile as latro has been in Latin.
If then we could write alâtrinãsah, we should have an appropriate epithet of the Maruts, in the sense of not assailing or not reviling, in fact, free from malevolence, as Wilson translated the word, or rather Sâyana's explanation of it, atardanarahita. What gives me some confidence in this explanation is this, that it is equally applicable to the other passage where alâtrina occurs, III, 30, 10:
alâtrináh valáh indra vragáh gók purâ hántoh bháyamânah vi ära.
Without barking did Vala, the keeper of the cow, full of fear, open, before thou struckest him.
If it should be objected that vraga means always stable, and is not used again in the sense of keeper, one might reply that vragáh, in the nom. sing., occurs in this one single passage only, and that bhayamânah, fearing, clearly implies a personification. Otherwise, one might translate: 'Vala was quiet, O Indra, and the stable of the cow came open, full of fear, before thou struckest.' The meaning of alâtrina would remain the same, the not-barking being here used as a sign that Indra's enemy was cowed, and no longer inclined to revile or defy the power of Indra. Hom. hymn. in Merc. 145, oùdè kúves deákovro.
Note 2. See I, 38, 15, note 1, page 95.
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