Atharva-Veda Samhita/Book VI/Hymn 127

127. Against various diseases: with a wooden amulet.

[Bhṛgvan̄giras.—vānaspatyam uta yakṣmanāçanadevatyam. ānuṣṭubham: 3. 3-a. 6-p. jagatī.]

This hymn is not found in Pāipp. Kāuç. applies it (26. 33-39), with ii. 7, 25; vi. 85, 109; viii. 7, in a healing rite against various diseases (with this hymn specially the person treated is to be smeared by means of a splinter of palāça, ib. 34; and the head of one seized by Varuṇa is to be anointed, ib. 39); and it is reckoned (note to 26. 1) to the takmanāçana gaṇa.

Translated: Zimmer, p. 386 (with comment on the diseases); Griffith, i. 315; Bloomfield, 40, 530.—See also Grohmann, Ind. Stud. ix. 396 ff.

1. Of the vidradhá, of the red balā́sa, O forest-tree, of the visálpaka, O herb, do thou not leave even a bit (? piçitá).

Or lóhitasya may be a separate disease (so rendered by Zimmer: the comm. takes it as either "red" or "[a disease of] the blood"). The form visálpaka is given here on the strength of SPP's authorities (among which living repeaters of the text are included), and of the comm., which derives it from root sṛp (vividhaṁ sarpati), with substitution of l for r; no manuscript is to be trusted to distinguish lpa and lya, and, as the word is unknown save in this hymn and in ix. 8 and xix. 44, there was nothing to show which was the true reading. The comm. takes caturan̄gulapalāçavṛkṣa to be the tree addressed, and vidradha as vidaraṇaçīlo vraṇaviçeṣaḥ; also piçita as nidānabhūtaṁ duṣṭam māṅsam; and balāsa as kāsaçvāsādi. ⌊Our P.M.E.I.O.R.K. combine visálpakasyoṣadhe in saṁhitā in c; and this SPP. adopts in his text, and reports nothing to the contrary from his authorities.⌋

2. The two testicles that are thine, O balā́sa, laid away in thine armpit (? kákṣa)—I know the remedy for that, the cīpúdru, a looking-upon.

By a blundering confusion of c and ç in transcription, in our text and in the Index Verborum founded upon it, the form çīpúdru instead of cī- has been adopted for this verse. The comm. reads cīpadru, and calls it "a kind of tree having this name"; perhaps cīpúḍu is the true form. We should have expected rather úpa- or ápi- than ápaçritāu in b (= apakṛṣṭam āçritāu; and kakṣe = bāhumūle, comm.). ⌊"Testicles": perhaps swellings of the axillary "glands."⌋

3. The visálpaka that is of the limbs, that is of the ears, that is in the eyes—we eject the visálpaka, the vidradhá, the heart-disease; we impel away downward that unknown yákṣma.