Page:Atharva-Veda samhita volume 2.djvu/536

xix. 55- 2. Of thee that art good what arrow [is] in the wind, this is that of thine; therewith be gracious to us. Let not us, O Agni, thy neighbors, receive harm, reveling with abundance of wealth, with food.

3. Evening after evening [is] Agni our house-lord; morning after morning [is he] giver of well-willing; be thou giver of good to us of every kind; may we, kindling thee, adorn (puṣ) ourselves.

4. Morning after morning [is] Agni our house-lord; evening after evening [is he] giver of well-willing; be thou giver of good to us of every kind; kindling thee, may we thrive (ṛdh) a hundred winters.

5. May I be one not falling short of food; to the food-eating lord of food, to Agni [as] Rudra be homage.

Here also there is discordance as to the verse-division; the Anukr. ⌊and comm.⌋ further add to vs. 5 what in our edition is 6 a, b, and then make one verse of what remains of the hymn; and SPP. follows them. The translation adheres to our text (which represents all the mss. till that time known to us), especially because its division seems better suited to the sense. At the beginning, all the authorities, and SPP., have ápaçcādagdhā́nnasya, divided by the pada-text into ápaçcā: dagdhá॰annasya (or -gdha॰án-); ⌊but Whitney's W. has daghānt-; his M. has dagdhvānn-; and his P. has dagghvānt- or possibly dagdhvānt-, it is not clear which: at any rate, in P. and M. there is a pada before the ā;⌋ the comm. understands apaçcādagdhā ’nnasya, and solemnly explains it as meaning: annasyā ’paçca[dagdhā] paçcādbhāge ‘dagdhā sthālīpṛṣṭhabhāge dagdhānnarahitaḥ! The correctness of our conjectural emendation to ápaçcādaghvā́ ’nnasya is put beyond question by the occurrence of a corresponding phrase, ápaçcāddaghvā́ ’nnam bhūyāsam, in MS. iii. 9. 4, p. 120$17$, and also in Āp. vii. 28. 2.* Part of the mss. accent bhūyāsam. In b, all SPP's authorities ⌊save one⌋, and most of ours, give annādāyo ‘nn (variously accented: p. anna॰adáyaḥ), apparently a case of misunderstanding of āyā as yo after the Bengāli method of writing o;† but two of our mss., P.M., have annādā́yā́ ’nn-, which is the reading of our text; the comm. likewise understands -dāya, and SPP. also accepts it in his text.

* ⌊The phrase á-paçcād-daghvane náre occurs at RV. vi. 42. 1; TB. iii. 7. 10$6$; Āp. xiv. 29. 2; compare apaçcā-daghvane naraḥ at SV. i. 352, ii. 790. It may be worth noting that the comm. to TB. brings the epithet into connection with food, explaining the phrase as 'a man devoid of brightness (i.e. dull) after his meal, unable to digest what he has