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II, 4. COMMENTARY.
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more conservative for the present to hold that vishkandha, as well as the opportunistic sámskandha at AV. XIX, 34, 5, are designations of hostile demoniac forces. One may easily be convinced, by examining, with the aid of Whitney's Index Verborum, all the passages in which the word occurs, that the latter meaning suits as well as the former. Of course the boundary-line between disease and possession by demons is an evanescent one in all Atharvan writings. The formation vishkandha, moreover, suggests vyámsa (RV. I, 32, 5, &c.) and vigrîva (RV. VIII, 4, 24), both of them designations of demons (cf. Weber, Ind. Stud. IV, 410). Thus it has seemed best to leave the word untranslated for the present.
Stanza 2. a. gambhá, convulsions, cramps, or colic.' The translation is reasonably certain. Weber, Ind. Stud. XIII, 142, describes the trouble as an infantile disease, perhaps teething; cf. also Zimmer, 1. C., 392, and Henry, Le livre VII de l'Atharva-véda, p. 53. The etymology of the word, and the epithet sámhanu, 'shutting the jaws,' at AV. VIII, 1, 16, seem to lend themselves at first sight to such an interpretation, but it is after all too narrow. Sayana, gambhât himsakåt krityådeh, yad vâ gambha iti dantaviseshasya akhya, rakshasadantaviseshakritát khadanât. See, however, his very different interpretation at VIII, 1, 16. At Kaus. 32, 1; 35, 15 occurs the word gambhagrihîta. Darila at 32, 1 defines it as gambho rakshah, tena grihîtah; according to Kausika and Kesava, the patient is an infant which is put to the mother's breast and fed with rice and fennel steeped in milk?. All this would still pass readily as a cure.of diseases connected with teething. But in Kaus. 35, 12-15 we have the following performance:
one who wishes to know how much grain may be found among the chaff. And Yaska is the high priest; how much worse are the epigonil
Kaus. gambhagrihîtâya (Kes. bâlakâya) stanam prayakhati, priyangutandulân abhyavadugdhân pâyayati.
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