Grihya Sutras

SR No.: 007685
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1886
Total Pages: 2642
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1081

24
VEDIC HYMNS.
THE FEMININE Árushi, as a SUBSTANTIVE.
If used as a substantive, árushî seems to mean the dawn. It is likewise used as a name of the horses of Agni, Indra, and Soma; also as a name for mare in general.
It means dawn in X, 8, 3, though the text points here so clearly to the dawn, and the very name of dawn is mentioned so immediately after, that this one passage seems hardly sufficient to establish the use of árushî as a recognised name of the dawn. Other passages, however, would likewise gain in perspicuity, if we took árushî by itself as a name of the dawn, just as we had to admit in several passages arusha by itself as a name of the morning. Cf. I, 71, I.
Arushi means the horses of Agni, in I, 14, 12:
yukshvá hí árushîh ráthe harítah deva rohitah.
Yoke, O god (Agni), the red-horses to the chariot, the bays, the ruddy.
I, 72, 10. prá nîkîh agne árushih agânan.
They knew the red-horses, Agni, coming down. VIII, 69, 5.
Soma, as we saw, was frequently spoken of as arushah
hárik.
In IX, 111, 2, tridhấtubhik árushîbhih seems to refer to the same red-horses of Soma, though this is not quite clear.
The passages where árushî means simply a mare, without any reference to colour, are VIII, 68, 18, and VIII, 55, 3.
It is curious that Arusha, which in the Veda means red, should, as pointed out before, in its Zend form aurusha, mean white. That in the Veda it means red, and not white, is shown, for instance, by X, 20, 9, where svetá, the name for white, is mentioned by the side of arushá. Most likely arushá meant originally brilliant, and became fixed with different shades of brilliancy in Sanskrit and Persian. Arushá presupposes a form ar-vas, and is derived from a root ar in the sense of running or rushing. See Chips from a German Workshop, vol. ii, pp. 135, 137.
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