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HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
Stansa 8.
The stanza alludes to the well-known legend which makes the demon Svarbhanu smite with darkness (eclipse) the sun, who is then freed by Indra and Atri; see RV. V, 40, 5-9; Tait. S. II, 1, 2, 1 ; Kath. S. XII, 13; Sat. Br. V, 3, 2, 2; Pañk. Br. IV, 5, 1; XIV, 11, 14; XXIII, 16, 2; Sankh. Br. XXIV, 3. 4. The moralising cause of the sun's mishap, his enas (sin), is not expressed distinctly anywhere, nor is it to be taken au grand sérieux. By comparison it is treated as a disease, and, like disease or misfortune in general, ascribed to some moral delinquency, requiring expiation (pråyaskitti); cf. st. 1.
II, 12. COMMENTARY TO PAGE 89.
The essays on the interpretation of this hymn form an interesting chapter in the history of Vedic study, and we have devoted to the subject an article in the second series of our Contributions, Amer. Journ. Phil. XI, 330 ff., entitled 'On the so-called fire-ordeal hymn, AV. II, 12.' The hymn was first interpreted in the sense of a fire-ordeal by Emil Schlagintweit, in an address before the Royal Bavarian Academy in 1866, entitled Die Gottesurtheile der Indier ;' this interpretation was adhered to by Weber, Ind. Stud. XIII, 164 ff.; Ludwig, Der Rigveda, III, 445; Zimmer, p. 183 ff. ; cf. alco Kaegi, Alter und Herkunft des germanischen Gottesurtheils,' Festschrift zur Begrüssung der XXXIX. Versanimlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Zürich (1887), p. 51? The interpretation which is presented here is founded upon our above-mentioned article, where Kausika's significant employment of the hymn was first brought forward ; in essential agree
See also Stenzler, ‘Die Indischen Gottesurtheile,' Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, IX, 661-82.
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