Madhuvidya

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

Page 514

number of pieces must be separated by the player to win the game. This minimum number could be twelve. The assumption is supported by the description of the game played at the time of the Agnyädheya as described by the Baudh $S 2.9. There the sacrificer plays the game with his three sons using 49 pieces of the Vibhitaka fruit. The father and the two elder sons who must win the game take twelve pieces each and win, leaving 13 for the youngest son who loses. If there was no rule about the minimum number of pieces the game at the Agnyâdheya could have been played even with 17 or 33 pieces (the father and the two elder sons together removing 12 or 25 pieces respy, leaving 5 or 9 for the youngest).
4. AV 7.50.5 : We read here ávim vrko yáthā máthad evå mathnāmi te krtám "I shall crush your krta (throw) as a wolf tears to pieces a sheep". Here a gambler seems to challenge his opponent who has won the game by making a krta and wants to nullify the opponent's success. How do we understand this challenge? According to the mode of play described by Lueders a game comes to an end when the two players in turn have thrown the dice on the ground. In such a game, the loser has no chance to undo what the winner has achieved. Lueders (Phil.Ind.p.154.f.n.2) takes the above AV. line to mean that the speaker wants to prevent his opponent from making the kȚta aya by reciting some magic formulae. This can hardly be correct. The verb mathnāmi expresses drawing apart what actually exists before the speaker and not preventing something from happening. Moreover, understood the way Lueders has done,comparison with a wolftearing to pieces a sheep is out of place. We have, therefore, to say that the loser while issuing the challenge wants to add to the opponent's dice, already thrown on the ground, some more which would also result in a kȚta. In such an event, the challenger's krta will have nullified the winner's krta. Such an understanding of the stanza means that it was open for the loser to defeat the winner by throwing dice once more, In this case, the total number of turns the two players would have becomes three and not two as in the unchallenged game.
5. Game in which division by five is decisive : Lueders (Phil. Ind. p. 159) rejects Weber's view that the placing of five akşas on the hand of the king in the rājasūya sacrifice implies that here we have an allusion to a game in which the number of dice is to be divided not by four but by five. According to Lueders the placing of five akşas has nothing to do with the game of dice and that the number of dice, which is five, is detemined by the number of the direction(s) which the king is supposed to make symbolically subservient to him. That the number of dice is determined by the number of directions is correct. But it is not correct to say that here the aksas have nothing to do with the game of dice. Just as in the RV 1.41.9 one who has four dice in his hand arouses fear in the mind of the opponent (because in that kind of game the number of dice was to be divided by four and the holder of
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