Satapatha Bramhana Part 05

SR No.: 007680
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1900
Total Pages: 2017
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 44 MB

Page 688

MANDALA I, HYMN 13.
9
10. I invoke hither the foremost, all-shaped Tvashtri to come hither; may he be ours alone.
11. O tree, let the sacrificial food go, O god, to the gods. May the giver's splendour be foremost.
12. Offer ye the sacrifice with the word Svâhâ to Indra in the sacrificer's house. Thereto I invoke the gods.
NOTES. The hymn is ascribed, as the whole collection to which it belongs, to Medhâtithi Kanva (see the note on the preceding hymn). Its metre is Gayatri. Verses 1-4 = SV. II, 697-700. Verse 9 = RV. V, 5, 8. Verse 10 =TS. III, 1, 1), 1; TB. III, 5, 12, 1; MS. IV, 13, 10.
The hymn belongs to the class of Åprî hymns, which were classed by the ancient arrangers of the Samhitå among the Agni hymns. The Åpri hymns, consisting of eleven or twelve verses, were destined for the Prayaga offerings of the animal sacrifice (comp. H. O., Zeitschrift der D. Morg. Gesellschaft, XLII, 243 seq.). They were addressed, verse by verse in regular order, partly to Agni, partly to different spirits or deified objects connected with the sacrifice, such as the sacrificial grass, the divine gates through which the gods had to pass on their way to the sacrifice, &c. The second verse was addressed by some of the Rishi families to Tanûnapåt, by some to Naråsamsa ; in some of the hymns we find two verses instead of one (so that the total number of verses becomes twelve instead of eleven) addressed the one to Tanûnapat, the other to Narasamsa. Bergaigne (Recherches sur l'histoire de la Liturgie Védique, p. 14) conjectures that some of the Rishi families had only seven Prayagas. This opinion is based on the identical appearance of four verses (8-11) in the Åpri hymns of the Visvâmitras (III, 4) and of the Vasishthas (VII, 2), and on the diversity of metres used in two other Åpri hymns, IX, 5 and II, 3. To me this conjecture, though very ingenious, does not seem convincing.
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