________________
IV, 12. COMMENTARY.
385
deals with it twice, 28, 5. 6, and 28, 14. The practice described in the former place is assigned by Kesava to the healing of broken bones, wounds, and flow of blood caused by weapons (asthibhange rudhirapravahe sastrabhighâtadau bhaishagyam). It consists in sprinkling the patient at dawn when the stars fade (with a decoction of the lâkshå-plant, Kesava adds), then giving him to drink a so-called prishataka', a mixture of ghee and milk (so Darila ; cf. Kaus. 49, 15), and finally anointing him with it: 28, 5. rohanisty avanakshatresvasiñkati. 6. prishâtakam påyayaty abhyanakti. At Kaus. 28, 14 the performance is very similar, läkshâlingâbhir (sc. rigbhir) dugdhe phântân påyayati,'while reciting the stanzas characterised by the mention of the läksha-plant (according to the commentators, AV. V, 5 in addition to our hymn) he gives the patient to drink a decoction (of the plant) in milk. Darila distinctly describes this as a cure for wounds (arusho bhaishagyam), while with Kesava the scope of the charm is broader, namely, 'against wounds from knives, clubs, stones, burns, in fact all wounds of the body.'
The name lákshâ, under which the plant addressed in this hymn goes consistently in the ritual books, does not occur in our hymn, but instead arundhati. In AV. V, 5, 7 the lâksha is mentioned-apparently a år. dey, in the Mantras --and it there appears distinctly as an alternate designation of the creeper called arundhati, or silakî, a parasitic plant which grows up on the stems of many trees (V, 5, 5), and which is otherwise described in the same hymn; cf. also Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 67. Since the plant is employed to cure wounds (arus), the student of the Atharvan need hardly be warned that there is a punning symbolic connection between the disease and the simple ; cf. Darila's
For prishâtaka, see Gobh. Grih. III, 8, 1 ff.; Grihyasamgraha II, 59, and my note on the same, Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch. XXXV, p. 580.
s Possibly also róhanî; see the note on stanza 1. Sâyana at VI, 59, 1 explains arundhati as sahadevî (cf. the text of VI, 59, 2). [42]
сс
Digitized by Google
