Author: Friedrich Max Müller

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9781230271651

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ...bring clouds without wind. Langlois, it is true, translates without any misgivings: 'Ces dieux peuvent sur un sol desseche faire tomber la pluie sans l'accompagner de vent.' Wilson: 'They send down rain without wind upon the desert.' Benfey saw the incongruous character of the epithet, and explained it away by saying that the winds bring rain, and after they have brought it, they moderate their violence in order not to drive it away again; hence rain without wind. Yet even this explanation, though ingenious, and, as I am told, particularly truthful in an Eastern climate, is somewhat too artificial. If we changed the accent, avatam, unchecked, unconquered, would be better than avatam, windless. But avata, unconquered, does not occur in the Rig-veda, except as applied to persons. It occurs most frequently in the phrase vanvan avataA, which Sayana explains well by himsan ahimsitaA, hurting, but not hurt: (vi. 16, 20; 18, 1; ix. 89, 7.) In ix. 96, 8, we read prit-su vanvan avataA, in battles attacking, but not attacked, which renders the meaning of avata perfectly clear. In vi. 64, 5, where it is applied to Ushas, it may be translated by unconquerable, intact. There are several passages, however, where avata occurs with the accent on the last syllable, and where it is accordingly explained as a Bahuvrihi, meaning either windless or motionless, from vata, wind, or from vata, going, (i. 62, 10.) In some of these passages we can hardly doubt that the accent ought to be changed, and that we ought to read avata. Thus in vi. 64, 4, avate is clearly a vocative applied to Ushas, who is called avata, unconquerable, in the verse immediately following. In i. 52, 4, the Maruts are called avatan, which can only be avataA, unconquerable; nor can we...