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400
HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
the priests of our school ever had any other text, or, what is more to the point, that the original versifex had composed differently. The merit of the Paippalada's pasyasi is so obvious that it may be due to a conscious improvement on the part of its author. The metre of the stanza is irregular (Anukramanî, svarag); the first Pada is hypercatalectic, the third Pada may be sustained by reading, with elision and crasis, dívântáriksham for dívam antariksham. Hillebrandt's suggestion, accepted by Grill, that ad be thrown out seems to me unnecessarily violent.
8. Hillebrandt would restore the Pâda: pásyati práti pasyati; Grill (with the help of the Paippalada), á pasyasi prá pasyasi, continuing with pasyasi throughout. Sayana retains the third person, referring the stanza to the person who wears the amulet: he devi sadampushpåkhye oshadhe tvadvikâramanidhårakosyam ganas tvatprasadâd åpasyati âgâmibhayakâranam pratihartum gânâti, 'O goddess plant, sadampushpå by name, this person here, who wears an amulet fabricated out of thee, by thy favour perceives the cause of approaching danger, and knows how to repel it.' The emendation of práti to prá (Grill) is especially undesirable, as the same expression occurs in a closely parallel situation, AV. VII, 13, 2.
b. Grill suspects the second pasyati, and imagines oshadhe in its place.
d. The temptation to emend the vocative devi to the nominative devi is great. The sense then would be that the amulet itself sees all dangers. Grill, as we have seen above, adopts the Paippalåda reading pasyasi, is thus enabled to retain devi, and also obtains essentially the same sense.
Stansa 2. a. Read prithvih. The three heavens are well known; see, e.g. AV. V, 4, 3; VI, 95, I ; XVIII, 2, 48; XIX, 39, 6 (cf. the note on V, 4, 3). For the three earths see RV. I, 108, 9; II, 27, 8; III, 56, 2; AV. VI, 21, 1, and Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, V, p. 305, note; Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 357 ; Bergaigne, La Religion Védique, I,
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