Page:Atharva-Veda samhita volume 2.djvu/513

969

1. Bringing together witchcraft to the house of the witchcraft-maker, as it were debt from debt, do thou, O ointment, crush in the ribs of the hostile eye-conjurer.

2. What evil-dreaming [is] in us, what in [our] kine, and what in our house, also the...of one hostile, let him that is unfriendly take upon himself (prati-muc).

Both sense and meter require the emendation in d of priyás to ápriyas, and the comm. has the latter, but all the authorities,* and Ppp. (durhārdaṣ priya pra-), and SPP. give the former. In c, the general reading of the mss. is ánāmagas tvám (p. ánāmagaḥ: tvám); for tváṁ ca is found tvā́ṁ ca, táṁ ca, táṁta, ⌊tvác ca, tá ca, tac ca⌋. SPP. accepts ánāmagas tám, but what sense he can possibly attach to the words does not appear. Ppp. gives māmagatasya dur-. The comm. reads anāmakas tac ca, which is equally impossible; and he makes a senseless explanation of anāmakas: īdṛn̄nāmā tādṛn̄nāme ’ty evaṁ nāmarahitaḥ; and he falsely regards durhārdas as a nom. sing. qualified by anāmakas. Our conjecture, anāmayatváṁ ca d-, is very unsatisfactory, in regard both to meter and to sense; anāgastvám 'guiltlessness' would make a good anuṣṭubh pāda, and be very near to the reading of the mss.; but it would be, equally with anāmayatvam, discordant with duṣvápnyam, and would require priyás in d. ⌊Ppp. reads muñcatā at the end.⌋

* ⌊The reciter V., curiously, has as an alternative, durhā́rdo ‘priyás, which (the accent being wrong) is neither one thing nor the other, but may well be taken as supporting the comm's reading ápriyas, as against priyás; the true saṁhitā-reading would then be durhā́rdó ‘priyaḥ.⌋

⌊The solution of this desperate passage seems to me to be suggested by 57. 5 below, of which the first part is identical with our a, b here, and of which the second part begins with anāsmākás tád and ends (nearly like v. 14. 3 d) with niṣkám iva (pronounce niṣkéva) práti muñcatām. In our c, d I would read anāsmākás tád durhā́rdó ‘priyaḥ práti muñcatām (pada-reading duḥ॰hā́rdaḥ: ápriyaḥ), and render 'that let him who is not