Page:Atharva-Veda samhita volume 2.djvu/29

485 sambhavanti: tāir ārujantī ’ti çaphārujaḥ: i.e. 'breaking things with their hoofs.' The irregularity of meter allows us to suspect the tradition of the word. The comm. also strangely explains rebhe as çabdaṁ kurvate rakṣase! ⌊Root ribh: cf. note to vs. 7.⌋ Ppp. reads in d atiti for acitam.

The verse is RV. vs. 12, where it is decidedly better in place.

22. Thee the devout, O Agni, powerful one, would we fain put about us [as] a stronghold, [thee] of daring color, day by day, slayer of the destructive one.

23. With poison smite thou back the destructive ones, the demoniacs, O Agni, with keen brightness (çocís), with heat-pointed flames (arcí).

24. With great light Agni shineth out; he maketh all things manifest by his greatness; he forceth away the ill-conditioned ungodly wiles; he sharpeneth his two horns to gore the demons.

25. The two horns that thou hast, O Jātavedas, unaging, of keen thrust, sharpened by devotion (bráhman)—with them do thou gore, O Jātavedas, the attacking enemy (durhā́rd), the advancing kimīdín with thy flame (arcís).

At the end of this verse, nikṣva seems to have been taken for a 2d sing, middle; but it is doubtless a corruption* for nikṣa, the root showing an a-stem elsewhere. Ppp. avoids the error by reading nṛcakṣaḥ; and also yātudhānam for arciṣā before it, which gets rid of yet another difficulty of construction, though it makes the irregular meter yet worse. In our edition, in d, the accent-mark which should stand under the do of jātavedo has slipped out of place to the left, under ve. *⌊We must assume that the corruption is an old one if the v of viníkṣve is to be ascribed to it. Since the forms