Madhuvidya

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

Page 94

378
NOTES AND COMMUNICATIONS
instance, his relating anīkam (= mukham) to the shaft of the arrow and understanding salya and anīka together to constitute the danda is not satisfactory. The salya and the danda are two distinct parts of the arrow. Secondly, the Brāhmana passage does not speak about the simultaneous coming into existence of the two kinds of serpent. That is Bhattabhāskara's guess. Actually there is nothing to prohibit us from imagining that all the reptiles mentioned in this section came into existence together from the different parts of the arrow. Obviously then, the Brāhmana mentions salya and anika together in one clause simply because they are not really two separate parts of the arrow, anika being only the point of the metal head salya." And if we assume that the two were mentioned together in order to indicate the sahotpatti of the nirdamsi serpent and the svaja, then there was no necessity to use saha again to indicate that they were produced together (saha jäyete). Even if we understand Bhattabhāskara as pointing out that the mention together of salya and anika underlines the sameness of time, and the use of saha in the principal clause underlines the sameness of material (ekasmad dandāt), even then this latter purpose is already well served by putting together salya and anīka in the same clause. There is thus no room for saha in this context.
It is therefore better to separate sahasaḥ not into two but into three words as sa ha saḥ. The expression sa ha saḥ, thus obtained, can be interpreted in two ways. (1) The first saḥ may be taken to refer to anūkam mentioned in the previous sentence. The sentence thus obtained would read as yad anīkam āsīt sa ha sah svajah 'what was the point, that indeed (became) that svaja'. But in this interpretation we cannot give good reason for mentioning salya and anīka together, if they were again to be separated for understanding the rise of two different kinds of serpent from them. Moreover, the sentence, thus obtained, differs from the general sentence pattern in that it shows the emphasizing particle ha and one more sah in the principal clause, which is not the case in the other corresponding sentences. (2) In the second interpretation we do not take sa ha saḥ svajaḥ as referring to the rise of a serpent (svaja) different from the one mentioned previously (nirdamśī sarpah). We understand it as only giving the name of the serpent which was referred to earlier. The word nirdamsī' not biting' describes 10 the serpent whose name is svaja. The passage beginning with atha yah salyah therefore may be translated as: Now what was the head (of the arrow), what the point, that became the serpent, not biting. That, indeed, (is) that svaja.
The construction sa ha sah (svajah), assumed above, has a parallel in tad
When in Ait. Br., 4.8, an arrow is said to have three (tripandhi) or four elements (catua. sandhi), anika and balya are counted separately, the third and the fourth elements being tejana and parna. But when an arrow is said to have two elements (dvigandhi), only áalya and tejana are mentioned, anika being then included in the salya.
10 As was seen above, Bhattabhāskara takes nirdambi to be the name of the serpent. This is unlikely. In that case the Brāhmana would not have added sarpah before it. The word andhahib
blind snake' which occurs at the end of this section is also a description. Obviously that kind of snake did not have a special name.
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