Page:The Hymns of the Rigveda Vol 1.djvu/448

Friend of the Gods, brought, grasping fast, the Soma which he had taken from yon loftiest heaven.

7 The Falcon took and brought the Soma, bearing thousand libations with him, yea, ten thousand.
The Bold One^[1] left Malignities behind him, wise, in wild joy of Soma, left the foolish.

I, As I lay within the womb, considered all generations of these Gods in order.
A hundred iron fortresses confined me, but forth I flew with rapid speed a Falcon,

2 Not at his own free pleasure did he bear me: he conquered with his strength and manly courage.
Straightway the Bold One left the fiends behind him and passed the winds as he grew yet more mighty.

3 When with loud cry from heaven down sped the Falcon, thence hasting like the wind he bore the Bold One,
Then, wildly raging in his mind, the archer Kṛiṣânu aimed and loosed the string to strike him.

4 The Falcon bore him from heaven's lofty summit as the swift car of Indra's Friend bore Bhujyu.
Then downward hither fell a flying feather of the Bird hasting forward in his journey.

5 And now let Maghavan accept the beaker, white, filled with milk, filled with the shining liquid;
The best of sweet meath which the priests have offered: that Indra to his joy may drink, the Hero, that he may take and drink it to his rapture.

1 The womb of the rain cloud. A hundred fortresses:cf 'Şambara's hundred ancient castles' (II, 14. 6.) Considered: or reviewed, in hope of finding a deliverer. The speaker is Agni, that is, the lightning which rends the cloud and brings down the sweet rain-the fleet Falcon who brings Soma from heaven. See Prof. Bloomfield, The Myth of Soma and the Eagle, Festgruss an Rudolf von Roth, 1893, pp 149-155. Of. Hymns of the Atharva-veda, VI. 48. 1. 2 Not at his own free pleasure: the falcon's mere will was not enough, says Soma; he had first to fight and conquer my keepers. The Bold One; Indra. See stanza 7 of the preceding hymn, 3 The Bold One: meaning Soma. The construction of the first line is difficult. Krisdnu: one of the guards of the celestial Soma. See I. 155 2 4 The allusion in the first line is to the rescue of Bhujyu, by the Asvins (see I. 112. 6), and we should therefore expect indravatoh, 'of Indra's two friends, instead of indravato. Feather: parnám, which became on earth the sacred Parpa or Palasa tree, the beautiful Butea Frondosa. 5 The metrical form and the ritual application indicate the comparatively recent addition of this stanza to the ancient hymn. The hymn has been discussed by Weber, Vedische Beiträge, pp. 4. ff.

1. The Bold One: Indra