Page:Atharva-Veda samhita volume 2.djvu/24

viii. 2- 21. A hundred, a myriad years, two periods (yugá), three, four, we make for thee; let Indra-and-Agni, let all the gods, approve thee, not showing enmity.

22. Unto autumn, unto winter, unto spring, unto summer, we commit thee; [be] the rains pleasant to thee, in which the herbs grow.

23. Death is master of bipeds; death is master of quadrupeds; from that death, lord of kine, I bear thee up; ⌊so⌋ do thou not be afraid.

24. Thou, unharmed one, shalt not die; thou shalt not die, be not afraid; [men] die not there, nor go to lowest darkness.

25. Every one, verily, lives there—ox, horse, man, beast—where this charm (bráhman) is performed, a defense (paridhí) unto living.

26. Let it protect thee from thy fellows, from witchcraft, from thy kinsmen; be thou undying, immortal, surviving; let not thy life-breaths (ásu) leave thy body.

27. The deaths that are a hundred and one, the perditions (nāṣṭrā́) that are to be over-passed—from that let the gods free thee, from Agni Vāiçvānara.

28. Agni's body art thou, successful (pārayiṣṇú); demon-slayer art thou, rival-slayer, likewise expeller of disease, a remedy pūtúdru by name.

Pūtúdru is (OB.) Acacia catechu or Pittus deodora; the comm. reads pūtadru and does not attempt ⌊on p. 587⌋ to identify it.* The mss. vary between -ṇú and -ṇús at end of a; our edition reads -ṇús (with our P.M.E.s.m.); SPP. adopts -ṇú, with the great majority of his authorities; the comm. has -ṇus; Ppp., as noticed above, lacks this verse. There is little to choose in point of acceptability between the two readings. *⌊As noted in the introd., the use of the hymn is followed in Kāuç. 58. 15 by the binding on of pūtu-dāru (so Bl's text, with the variant pūta-; in citing the text, at p. 568,