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310
SATAPATHA-BRÂHMANA.
subjects) and cattle, and fails to reach heaven.' This set of eleven (stakes), indeed, is just heaven!, and the set of eleven (stakes) means offspring (or people) and cattle; and when he lays hands on the (victims) of the (two) sets of eleven (stakes) he does not fail to reach heaven, and is not deprived of his offspring and cattle.
3. Pragâpati created the Virag; when created, it went away from him, and entered the horse meet for sacrifice. He followed it up with sets of ten ?
stakes. These two sets of eleven victims, tied to the twenty-one stakes (two being tied to the central stake), are to constitute the regular 'savanîyâh pasavah' of the pressing-days of the Asvamedha ; and in XIII, 5, 1, 3, and 5, 3, 11, the author argues against those who (on the first, and third days) would immolate only twentyone such victims, all of them sacred to Agni. As regards the second day, the author does not mention these particular victims, but this can scarcely be interpreted as an approval of twenty-one such victims, even though the number twenty-one certainly plays an important part on that day-seeing that Kâtyâyana, XX, 4, 25, makes the two sets of eleven victims the rule for all three days. For the third day, on the other hand, the author of the Brahmana (XIII, 5, 3, 11) actually recommends the immolation of twenty-four bovine victims as 'savanîyâh pasavah.' The deities of the first set of eleven victims (as perhaps also of the second set of the first day) are the same as those of the ordinary "ekâdasini' (see III, 9, 1, 621; and Våg. S. XXIX, 58), whilst the second set (of the second day, at all events) has different deities (Vâg. S. XXIX, 60). On the central day these victims are added to the sets of fifteen victims bound there to each of the twenty-one stakes; the mode of distribution being the same as on the other two days, viz., so that the first victim of each set—that is the one devoted to Agni-is bound to the central stake, whilst of the remaining twenty victims one is assigned to each stake.
1 Viz. inasmuch as the stakes stand right in front (to the east) of the sacrificial fire and ground, and the Sacrificer would thus miss the way to heaven if he were not to pass through the ekadasini.'
· The Virág metre consists of (three) decasyllabic pådas
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