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8
SATAPATHA-BRAHMANA.
he assuredly would, cut asunder the mind. This brick is threefold: the meaning of this has been explained.
SECOND BRAHMANA.
1. And at the back (western part of the altar), with (Vâg. S. XIII, 56), 'This one behind, the all-embracer;'-the all-embracer, doubtless, is yonder sun, for as soon as he rises, all this embracing space comes into existence. And because he speaks of him as (being) 'behind,' therefore one sees him only when he goes towards the back (west). The Sun, indeed, having become the eye, remained behind: it is that form he now bestows (on Agni).
2. 'His, the all-embracer's child, the Eye,'from out of that (all-embracing) form, the Sun, he fashioned the eye; the rains, the offspring of the eye, from out of the eye he fashioned the rainy season; the Gagati, the daughter of the rains, from out of the rainy season he fashioned the Gagati metre;-'from the Gagatt the Riksama,'-from out of the Gagati metre he fashioned the Riksama hymn-tune 2;-'from the Riksama
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'Or, perhaps, only when' (yadâ-eva).
No explanation of this sâman has been found anywhere. Sâyana, on the corresponding formula, Taitt. S. IV, 3, 4, 2 (where the term is spelt rikshama), merely remarks that it is 'a kind of sâman.' The meaning of the term 'similar to a rik' would seem to indicate a hymn-tune involving little, or no, modification of the text chanted to it. At V, 4, 1, 5 it is the Vairûpa-sâman which (together with the Gagatî, the Saptadasa-stoma, the rainy season, and the Vis) is in this way connected with the West. Now the textual parts of the Pankanidhanam Vairûpam (Sâma-v., vol. v, pp. 387, 575-6), ordinarily used as a prishtha-saman, show
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