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VI, III. COMMENTARY.
519
6, 1'); cf. Kausika, Introduction, p. lviii. The mâtrinâmâni are mentioned frequently in the Kausika (see Index B); the employment which bears most closely upon the sense of the present hymn is at Kaus. 26, 29–32, a rite which, according to the scholiasts, cures a person possessed by demons. Pulverised fragrant substances, mixed with ghee, are sacrificed, and the patient is anointed with what remains. The patient is next placed upon a cross-roads ?, a wicker-work of darbha grass, containing a coal-pan, upon his head; and upon the coal the previously mentioned fragrant substances are again offered. The patient going into a river against the current throws the same substances into a sieve), while another person from behind washes him off. Pouring more of the fragrant substances into an unburned vessel, moistening the substances (with ghee), placing the vessel into a three-footed wicker-basket made of muñga-grass he ties it to a tree in which there are birds' nests. The complicated ceremony is largely symbolic : it aims to purify, and indicate the passing out of the unhealthy conditions.
The hymn has been translated by Ludwig, Der Rigveda, III, 512; Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 393; Grill ?, pp. 21, 170; cf. also Hillebrandt, Vedachrestomathie, P. 50 ; Wise, Hindu System of Medicine, p. 279 ff. The Anukramani, agneyam.
Stansa 1. The Anukramanî designates the first stanza as paranushtup trishtubh. A considerable variety of textual emendations, none of which seems warranted by the exigencies of the case, are suggested by Grill, p. 170. The stanza consists of three trishtubh Pâdas, the second of
Cf. also XII, 1, 60, and the introduction to IV, 20.
The favourite place to divest oneself of evil influences; cf. Kaus. 27, 7, in the introduction to II, 10; Kaus. 30, 18, in the introduction to VI, 26, &c. See in general Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 267, and the index under kreuzweg.'
3 For the sieve, see the introduction to VI, 26.
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