Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 147

102
M. A. MEHENDALE
stanzas, of which seven are addressed directly to Agni, and five of these seven actually contain a voc. agne. But stanza 5 is not directly addressed to Agni. It contains a nom. sg. agnia and two third pers.sgs. vidát and bhuvat. It reads as agnir jātó átharvanā vidád visvāni kávyā bhúvad dūtó vivásvatak... Fr. E feels that the kavi could not have a stanza, in the middle of his sūkta, which, like the other stanzas, is not directly addressed to Agni. Therefore he wants to change agnih to agne (voc.) and consequently vidát and bhúvat to vidah and bhuvah ( 2nd per. sg.) assuring us that that was how the kavi had composed his stanza. Fr. E chooses to describe this assumed act of the SK as 'a miserable redactorial mis-correction". Now let us follow the footsteps of Fr. E in order to understand the genesis of SK's 'mis-correction'. According to him the SK felt that agne (voc.) was put in apposition to jātán by the kavi! And since he could not understand how this was possible he changed ågne to dgnih, so that it can be "syntactically smoother" with jātáh, and then also changed the two verbal forms noticed above. I just cannot believe all this. If the text heard by the SK had really ágne (voc.) and two verbal forms in second pers., could he not understand that here we have only to supply tvám? It is better to accept the text as it is and think that the kavi, in the middle of his sakta, changed his style probably to address his colleagues and tell them something about Agni.
RV 2.19.2 reads as asya mandano madhuo vájrahasto 'him indro arnovitàm vi vršcat/prá yád váyo na sudsarany ácchā práyamsi ca nadinām cákramanta. Fr. E asserts that in the last quarter, nadinam, coming after ca, should have been nadyah (nom. pl. ) 80 that it could be coordinated with práyamsi due to ca and both could be looked upon as subject of cakramanta. This nadyah (nom. pl.) of the original text was misunderstood by the SK as gen. sg. and was further changed to gen. pl. nadinām.
This theory is unacceptable. If the original text really contained nadyah, it could not be misunderstood as it came after práyamsi and the conjunction ca's And even assuming this mistake, why should the SK further be guilty of changing the sg. into the pl.? Here is Fr. E's answer : the SK did it in order to get three syllables as in his orthoepy nad yah gave him only two. Fr. E adds one more reason which, however, is not quite clear to me. He says the SK changed the sg. to pl. "both to fill up HİS pāda and possibly to indicate that the RIVERS were concerned some how...when "nadinám" alone would fit into the context AND the plural of "prayāmsi". I guess what he means is that nadinam (PL) was used because according to the SK, the water released by killing Vstra belonged to many rivers and also because the form práyāmsi was in the plural.
19 IA (3rd series) 2.4.2-3. 10 The particle ca placed after the first, instead of the second word, cf. Macdonell, Ved. Gr. (Students), p. 228.
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