Atharva-Veda Samhita/Book I/Hymn 2

2. Against injury and disease: with a reed.

[Atharvan.—cāndramasam; pārjanyam. ānuṣṭubham: 3. 3-p. virāṇnāma gāyatrī.]

The hymn is not found in the Pāipp. ms., but may have been among the contents of the missing first leaf. In the quotations of the Kāuç. it is not distinguishable from the following hymn; but the comm. is doubtless right in regarding it as intended at 14. 7, where it, with i. 19-21 and sundry other hymns, is called sāṁgrāmika or 'battle-hymn,' used in rites for putting an enemy to flight; and it (or vs. 1) is apparently designated by prathamasya (as first of the sāṁgrāmika hymns) in 14. 12, where the avoidance of wounds by arrows is aimed at; it is also reckoned (14. 7, note) as belonging to the aparājita gaṇa; further, it is used, with ii. 3, in a healing ceremony (25. 6) for assuaging wounds, etc.; and, after hymn 1 has been employed in the upākarman, it and the other remaining hymns of the anuvāka are to be muttered (139. 11). The comm. ⌊p. 16, top⌋, once more, quotes it from Nakṣatra ⌊error, for Çānti, says Bloomfield⌋ Kalpa 17, 18, as applied in a mahāçānti called aparājitā. Translated: Weber, iv. 394; Griffith, i. 3; Bloomfield, 8, 233.—Discussed: Bloomfield, AJP. vii. 467 ff. or JAOS. xiii. p. cxiii; Florenz, Bezzenberger's Beiträge, xiv. 178 ff.

1. We know the reed's father, Parjanya the much-nourishing; and we know well its mother, the earth of many aspects.

Vidmā is quoted in Prāt. iii. 16 as the example first occurring in the text of a lengthened final a.

2. O bow-string, bend about us; make thyself a stone; being hard, put very far away niggards [and] haters.

A bow-string is, by Kāuç. 14. 13, one of the articles used in the rite. With b compare ii. 13. 4 b. Pāda d is RV. iii. 16. 5 d. 'Niggard' is taken as conventional rendering of árāti. The comm. reads vīḻus, RV.-wise.

3. When the kine, embracing the tree, sing the quivering dexterous (ṝ ṛbhú) reed, keep away from us, O Indra, the shaft, the missile.

That is, apparently (a, b), 'when the gut-string on the wooden bow makes the reed-arrow whistle': cf . RV. vi. 67. 11 c, d. The comm. explains ṛbhum as uru bhāsamānam (!), and didyum as dyotamānam, which is probably its etymological sense. ⌊Discussed, Bergaigne, Rel. vid. i. 278 n., ii. 182.⌋

4. As between both heaven and earth stands the bamboo (? téjana), so let the reed-stalk (múñja) stand between both the disease and the flux (āsrāvá).

The verse seems unconnected with the rest of the hymn, but to belong rather with hymn 3. The comm. glosses tejana with veṇu. For āsrāva, cf. ii. 3; vi. 44. 2; the comm. explains it here by mūtrātīsāra 'difficulty (?) of urinating' or 'painful urination' ⌊'diabetes,' rather?⌋. Bloomfield understands it to mean "diarrœa," and bases upon this questionable interpretation his view of the meaning of the whole hymn, which he entitles "formula against diarrhœa."