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DECEMBER, 1894.]
BULLETIN OF THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
373
given us a translation of two books of the Sanhita, the thirteenth and seventh books.95 I shall speak of it quite as freely, as if one of the papers were not dedicated to me, just the one of the two that pleases me least, the translation of the thirteenth book. The choice was, I think, an unfortunate one. Such hymns do not lend themselves to translation, except for one's own use, when we are compelled to it; we do not voluntarily choose them. For it must be confessed that this whole version is hardly intelligible; and yet M. Henry has done everything in his power, he has struggled boldly with the text before him and no one could have performed such a task better. He has seen of course that the apparent unity of the book is open to doubt, but has let himself be led away by it. He sees in it the glorification of a body of myths under an uncommon and peculiar form. Here, however, I think, we have less to do with myths than usages, and these unhappily are not within our knowledge. Just on this book the ritual treatises of the Atharvave.ly, which are very capricious, do not give us much information. I had been struck with the general likeness of the commencement and the mantras and practices of the "royal rite," the rajasiya, as it is described in the Yajurveda, and had begged M. Henry to investigate this point. If he had followed this track he would perhaps have found himself on firm ground for the beginning at lenst, as Prof. Bloomfield has afterwards shewn in the excellent remarks which he has made on this translation. As a translation to be read from beginning to end, it is not successful. But as a commentary, as an honest and painstaking exposition of the difficulties of the text, as a starting point for other attempts, it is, in my opinion, of great value. And this is how M. Henry seems to have looked on it: it is eminently a work of scientific devotion. In the seventh book, he is on more favourable ground. Here we are in the midst of the usages of exorcism, sorcery, incantation on which this Veda is founded ; information about features of the ritual is abundant, though often concise and obscure, and we know something at least as to what it is all about. M. Henry's labours, which are carried out with care, are therefore welcome; he has added as it were another link to the chain of translations which now includes the first seven books of the Atharvaveda.
Mr. Magoun has edited, with translation and commentary, the Asurikalpa, 97 one of these short treatises subjoined in no regular order to the Atharvaveda under the general heading of parišishļas or appendices. In this, the practices of witchcraft, which are carried out by means of a plant called isuri, and which Mr. Magoun lias studied carefully, are described. The text, which is very corrupt, required many emendations, to which we must add those proposed afterwards by Geh, v. Böhtlingk.89 Professor Bloomfield has published in a completer form one of those detached studies, which I was able to refer to in the last Report90 from the summary report in the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, and he has followed it up by several others of the same kind, in which he shews, with his complete mastery of the subject, the importance of the ritual for the interpretation of the Veda, how many problems as to the arrangement and primitive meaning of the mantras are thereby solved, problems whose very existence would otherwise not even be guessed at. In several of these studies, which are usually confined by him to the Atharva-Vela, he has enlarged his scope and examined
86 Victor Henry, Les Hymnes Rohitas. Livre XIII. de l'Atharva l'eda, truit et commenté, Paris, 1891. Atharra. Veda, traduction et commentaire. Le livre VII. de 'Atharva-Veda trait et commenté, Paris, 1892.
88 In the fourth series of his Contributions to the interpretation of the Veda. I do not require to return here to the translation of the thirteenth book which M. Regnand has given; he hay perceived that what is described must go on partly at least on this earth, but he has a knowledge of the usages which we have not, it is his eternal union of the fire and the liquid. To gain auything from his version we would need to adopt his system and use the same language as he does. I do not yet know his most recent publication in which he criticizes the views of Prof. Bloomfeld.
87 H. W. Magoun, The Reurikalpa: a Witchcraft Practice of the Atharva Veda, teith an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Baltimore, 1889.
$5 In the leitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, XLIV. (1890), p. 489. 89 Tome XIX. p. 14.
Maurice Bloomfield, Contributions to the Interpretation of the Veda, in the American Journal of Philology, Vol. XI. 1890. Third Series in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. XV. 1891. Fourth Series in the American Journal of Philology, Vol. XII. 1892.
