Page:Atharva-Veda samhita volume 2.djvu/474

xix. 22- 14. To the seers, hail!

15. To the peaked ones (? çikhín), hail!

16. To the gaṇás, hail!

17. To the great gaṇás, hail!

18. To all the gaṇá-knowing (??) An̄girases, hail!

19. To the two thousands severally, hail!

20. To the bráhman (?), hail!

21. Heroisms [were] gathered with the bráhman as chief; the bráhman as chief in the beginning stretched the sky; the Brahman was born as first of creatures; therefore (téna) who is fit to contend with the Brahman?

Or (in d) 'with that (téna) Brahmán' SPP's text of the verse agrees with ours save that he accents in d bráhmaṇā with the mss., and has in c prathamó ’tá (p. -máḥ: utá, though the pada-mss. read -mā́: utá); the text of the comm. has -mo ’ta here, but -mo ‘tha in the verse repeated as 23. 30; the emendation in our text to -mó ha is plainly the easiest way out of the difficulty. The pada-mss. divide at the beginning, with remarkable absence of intelligence, bráhma: jyeṣṭhā, or jyeṣṭhā́; half the saṁhitā-mss. also accent jyeṣṭhā́; finally, the pada-mss., with incredible folly, divide at the end spárddhi: tuṁkáḥ! SPP. holds that the verse must have originally had brahmán throughout (four times), and gives in his note a text of it in that form (but with prathamó ‘tha in c); but it is far from improbable that bráhman was used in the first