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On Sthātús ca rātham in the Rgveda 1.70.7
- M. A. Mehendale RV. 1.70 is a hymn of Parāsára addressed to Agni. It consists of eleven, or according to another mode of counting (adhyayanataḥ), of six stanzas. The seventh (or the fourth) stanza reads as :
várdhān yaṁ pūrvi'ḥ kṣapó vírūpāḥ sthātús ca rátham stápravitam.
The first half of the line offers not much difficulty and can be rendered as “whom (Agni) many nights (and dawns), of different forms, may strengthen.' The diffuculty is presented by the second half. There we have ca after sthātus which apparently looks like the genitive sg. of sthātr-what is stationary (sthāvara). But, after ca, there is no word in gen. sg. with which it could be coordinated. Scholars, therefore, felt that a mistake had occurred in the transmission of the text and that the text has to be read as sthātúś carátham (i.e. carátham to be read as one word, and not two, ca rátham, as in the Pada text). Max Müller? defended this suggestion and Oldenberg (Noten) agreed with him. In support of the suggestion to read carátham occurs twice in the RV. viz. at 1.58.5 (sthātús carátham bhayate paratriņaḥ) and at 1.68.1 (sthātús carátham aktū'n vyū'rņot?). As regards the form sthātúr, Max Müller observes that it could be the old nom. acc. sg. of neuter noun in -tr. In later Sanskrit, however, we get the form sthātr'. Neither Max Müller nor Oldenberg tells us how they understood the line with the reading sthātús carátham. In the two RV. passages 1.58.5 and 1.68.1 referred to above, Sāyana interprets the two relevant words as sthāvaram... jangamaṁ ca. In 1.58.5 the word sthātúḥ has to be nom. sg. Sāyaṇa treats it as a form derived from the stem sthātú'. But he does not tell us how sthātúḥ
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