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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The hymns of the Rig Veda are, as is well known, almost entirely of a religious character, designed, or at least, adapted, for recitation at the worship of the various popular deities, or at some of the ceremonials connected with various important events in the domestic or public life of the ancient Indians. Among these, however, are interspersed a few of a different description, which, from the wide celebrity they had acquired, were carefully preserved by the descendants of their authors, or by other interested persons, and have been incorporated in the great collection of sacred songs.
page 26 note 2 Professor Max Müller's Essay on Comparative Mythology, in the Oxford Essays for 1856, contains a translation of this myth as narrated in the Ṣatapatha Brâhmaṇa. The Brâhmaṇa, however, only quotes and illustrates the easiest verses of the hymn (R. V. x. 95), making no reference to its most obscure and difficult portions. Some of the verses not cited in the Brâhmaṇa are explained by Professor Müller. See also Roth's Illustrations of Nirukta, pp. 153 ff. and 230.
page 26 note 3 Sur Litteratur and Geschichte des Weda, pp. 87.
page 27 note 1 See Sanskrit Texts, i. 127 ff.
page 27 note 2 Professor Aufrecht thinks this clause (ṣakatîr iva sarjati) should be rendered, ‘In the evening the forest moves like a cart,” with reference to the agitation of the branches by the evening air.
page 28 note 1 This last clause, which is repeated at the end of each of the verses, and transforms the hymn into an address to Soma, is perhaps a later addition to an older song; as it seems to have no connection with the other parts of the verses to which it is attached.
page 28 note 2 The three preceding verses are translated by Roth in his Illustrations of the Nirukta, p. 74.Google Scholar
page 29 note 1 These words are quoted in Nirukta, xii. 7.Google Scholar
page 30 note 1 Compare A. V. v. 28, 11, and Vâjasaneyi Sanhitâ, xvi. 64.
page 32 note 1 It is curious to find in so ancient a composition this now trite comparison of the changes of fortune to the revolutions of a wheel. The same idea occurs in the Mahâbhârata, iii. 15489: “After happiness, suffering, and after suffering, happiness, visit a man in succession, as the spokes of a wheel [revolve round] the nave.” According to Herodotus i. 207,Google Scholar Crœsus said to Cyrus: “If thou knowest that even thou art human, and rulest over mortals, learn first this lesson, that in the affairs of men there is a wheel which, by its revolution, renders it impossible for the same persons always to enjoy prosperity.”
page 32 note 2 Professor Aufrecht suggests that the one-footed may mean a cripple, and the three-footed, an old man with his staff.
page 32 note 3 Compare R. V. x. 68, 11.Google Scholar “The Fathers have adorned the sky with stars … and placed darkness in the night, and light in the day.”
page 33 note 1 Compare R. V. iv. 50, 8 f,Google Scholar where the prosperity and honor which attend a prince who retains and cherishes a domestic priest are described. See Professor Wilson's translation, and note on v. 9, in p. 214; and Roth's Art. on Brahma and the Brâhmans, Journ. Germ. Or. Society, i. 77 ff.Google Scholar See also the hymn from the A. V. iii. 19, next quoted in the text.
page 37 note 1 Compare a curious passage from the Taittirîya Brâhmana iii. 7, 12, 3f.Google Scholar “May Agni deliver me from any sin which my mother may have committed when I was in her womb, or which my father may have committed; May my parents have received no injury from me, when I, a son, in sucking, squeezed my mother and father in my delight.” Compare also R. V. vii. 86, 5,Google Scholar referred to in my paper, “Contributions to a knowledge of Vedic Theogony,” etc., p. 82, line 19.
page 37 note 2 See my former paper on, Yama, pp. 292 and 297.
page 38 note 1 Compare the ảιπνς ỏλєθρος of Homer.
page 38 note 2 Compare the passage quoted in my paper on Yama, p. 304.Google Scholar
page 38 note 3 Compare the article just referred to, p. 8.Google Scholar
page 39 note 1 Compare R. V. x. 85, 17.Google Scholar
page 39 note 2 See A. V. v. 30, 6, above.
page 40 note 1 There are three kinds of fire, the kravyâd, or funeral (here referred to), which devours dead bodies, the culinary (âmâd), and the sacrificial. See the Vâj. S. i. 17,Google Scholar and the commentary there.
page 40 note 2 See the 4th verse of the next hymn.
page 41 note 1 See my paper on Yama, p. 294,Google Scholar note 7.
page 41 note 2 Compare A. V. xix. 24, 4, 5, 8.Google Scholar
page 42 note 1 The Moon is not in the Vedas generally reckoned among the Âdityas. See my “Contributions to a knowledge of Vedic Mythology,” etc., pp. 75–77.Google Scholar
page 42 note 2 It would be difficult to say how great a duration is here denoted by this word; but it must be one of great length, if the long periods of years which are mentioned just before, may be taken as any indication.