Satapatha Bramhana Part 02

Author(s): Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford

Page 33

XXX
SATAPATHA-BRAHMANA.
Prof. Whitney. There offering is made severally to the sacrificer's grandfather and great-grandfather with the formula ‘N. N., this for thee!' to which some authorities add and for those who come after thee.' This addition is rejected by the author on the ground that 'svayam vai teshâm saha yeshâm saha,' which I translated by 'since he himself is one of those to whom [it would be offered] in common. Prof. Whitney takes exception to this, remarking that in that case, the phrase "and those who (come) after thee' might be added, without any reason to the contrary. But he forgets one important point, namely, that it would be a fatal thing for the sacrificer in this way to associate himself with the departed ancestors, and even make offering to himself along with them : it would simply mean that 'he would straightway go to yonder world,' that he would not live his fulness of days. The clause under discussion is elliptic, its literal translation being 'Himself surely (is) of those withal of whom (he is) withal.' This may either be taken in the sense in which I took it (see also St. Petersb. Dict. s.v. saha); or in a general way, 'He surely is one of those with whom he associates himself;' i.e. he would himself be a dead man.
In the legend of Manu and the Flood (I, 8, 1, 1 seq.) I find it impossible to accept Prof. Delbrück's conjecture, which Prof. Whitney thinks the best and only acceptable one, viz. that (in par. 4) the sentence sasvad ha ghasha asa, sa hi gyeshtham vardhate' is an interpolated gloss. My reason for not accepting it is the fact that the passage occurs likewise in the Kanva recension, and is thus authenticated for so comparatively early a period that the difficulty of accounting for the interpolation might be even greater than that of the interpretation of the passage itself. Professor Ludwig, in his kindly notice in Göttinger Gel. Anz.' 1883, proposes to take sasvat in the sense of avtws :
It quite so (i. e. in accordance with the prediction) became a large fish.' Prof. Max Müller has again translated this legend in his 'India, what can it teach us?' p. 134 seq., where he renders this passage by He became soon a large fish
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