Jain Journal 1974 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 46

JULY, 1974
as I have already indicated. In the Rg Veda, the following mantra
occurs:
35
"The wood which floats (is an object of worship), beyond the yonder ocean (or river), is Apuruşam, i.e., not Puruşa (that means that it is not spiritual but a material object, i.e., Ajiva). Therefore, discard it O Durhanu (uncouth speaker)! Then (after this discarding) only you go to the spiritual plane (the other stratum)." (X. 155.3)
It may be noticed here that this object of worship which was a wood described in terms of a boat or ship floating in the ocean, suggesting probably that the people that worshipped it came with it, not by land, but by sea.
It may further be noticed, however, here that this is a very peculiar hymn in the whole of the Rg Veda. Its author is given here as Sirimbitho Bharadvaja. Bharadvaja clearly means a man of the Bharadvaja Gotra. Such adoption of Gotra is common even today in the outer area e.g., Orissa, where prominent people take on some Gotra they choose. Sirimbitho may be a Prakrit form of some word beginning with 'Sri'. The word may be Sri-nibistha or Sri-anvita or something like it. The deity of this verse is Brahmanaspati. Unlike Sirimbitho Bharadvaja which is the solitary author, in the entire Rg Veda this Brahmanaspati in the Rg Veda is the deity of some other verses and hymn also. But Brahmanaspati is interpreted as Brhaspati. This may not be so. Brahmanaspati may mean a priest versed with Brāhmaṇa or the Vedic hymn or verses. These words may be the then Kalinga Prakrit of those old days and this verse seems to have been collected from the Kalinga country with reference to the wood worshipped in the Austric lands or islands of the ocean or of some Savaras in the up-land worshipping some wood or wooden image where Sindhu may mean river. This verse at least may therefore be a verse taken from Kalinga into the Rg Veda itself. Though the 10th Mandala is said to have been found on investigation to be the latest portion of the Rg Veda, the entire Rg Veda is, perhaps by mistake, taken to be a collection of the verses and hymns composed in North-West India, perhaps including the Upper Gangetic Plain. But it may be concluded that even in those days verses like this at least were collected from distant parts where the words had undergone some distinct Prakritic changes specially on account of Vratyas, as has happened here in Kalinga.
Significant it is here that even in those early days a wood or wooden image in a distant land was being worshipped perhaps as the Soul (or