Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/183

13 disease arising from hurtful changes of wind, bile, or phlegm), and also (38. 1) in one against bad weather (durdina), or (Keç.) for the prevention of rain. The third verse further is added to the Mṛgāra hymns in connection with lavation in another healing rite (27. 34).

Translated: Weber, iv. 405; Griffith, i. 15; Bloomfield, JAOS. xiii. p. cxiii ff. (= PAOS. May 1886); AJP. vii. 469 ff.; SBE. xlii. 7, 246.—Bloomfield regards it as addressed to "lightning, conceived as the cause of fever, headache, and cough." See his elaborate comment. Weber made it relate to fever, puerperal or infantile (on account of jarāyujá, 1 a).

1. First born of the afterbirth, the ruddy (usríya) bull, born of wind and cloud (?), goes thundering with rain; may he be merciful to our body, going straight on, breaking; he who, one force, hath stridden out threefold.

2. Thee, lurking (çri) in each limb with burning (çocís), we, paying homage, would worship (vidh) with oblation; we would worship with oblation the hooks, the grapples, [him] who, a seizer, hath seized this man's joints.

3. Release thou him from headache and from cough—whoever hath entered each joint of him; the blast (? çúṣma) that is cloud-born and that is wind-born, let it attach itself to forest-trees (vánaspáti) and mountains.

Ppp. has sṛjatām for sacatām in d. The comm. takes kāsás in a as nomin., explaining it as hṛtkaṇṭhamadhyavartī prasiddhaḥ çleṣmarogaviçeṣaḥ; vātajā́s to him is