Risht Samucchaya

Author(s): Durgadevacharya, A S Gopani
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

Page 68

INTRODUCTION
The RS and the AVI The earliest distinct reference to dreams and omens as a part of portents is found in the AV. It is also shown there how to ward off their evil influence. Thus, pathological condition, its implication and the means to get rid of it have all been touched in the AV. This shows the antiquity of the s science of omens and portents. The idea which is in germinal form here is worked out in its various detail by the subsequent observers of all the schools as it happened with respect to all other sciences.
The RS and the AA The AA goes a step further than the AV and declares in that he, who feels the sun like the moon and also feels that the sun does not send the rays, lives but for a short period. He dies shortly, according to the AA, who sees the sun as if it were a hole; who sees the shadow full of deformed and destroyed limbs; who sees, in a mirror or water, that his is head is not reflected as it should be; or a virgin also sees, in the mirror or water, a distorted reflection of his head. If one does not hear the sound just resembling that of a burning fire, after having closed the ears, he dies soon. According to it. death comes soon in the case of one who notices that the fire is 24 blue-coloured. The AA treats these phenomena under the Pratyakşadarśana which is just analogous to the Pratyakşa Rişta of the RS ( st. 131 ). The AA deals with the dreams also. One, who sees a black man in the dream, dies soon. He is attacked with premature death if he goes southward in the dream 25 surrounded with donkeys and hogs. All these phenomena have been clearly described, with insignificant variations in matters of detail, in the RS, which, besides saying about the prematureness of the death, makes a specific mention of the periods also (sts. 59; 46; 75-84; 143; 38; 142; 126; and 123 ). It cannot as be said whether the RS has inherited the tradition of the AA or not because the latter does not give the time-limit of death. But so far as the pathological conditions and their untoward effect are concerned, both RS and AA have much affinity between them.
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1 For the passage concerned, see App. I, p. 97. 3 Se. App. II, p. 97.