India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c8.s13.t1.17

c8.s13.t1.17

HUNTING—Hunting is referred to as *lubdha-yoga* (V.4.126), and a hunter was called *mārgika*, 'one who shoots *mṛigas*,' and a bird-trapper *pākshika* or *śākunika* (IV.4.35).³ Among *mṛigas* the *Kāśikā* includes not only deer, but also big game like the boar. The fowlers are said to have derived their epithets from the names of particular birds trapped by them, as *māyurika*, *taittirika*. Game-shooting was done with arrows provided with barbs (*patra*), and such arrows are noted by Pāṇini to have caused extreme pain (*ativyathana*, V.4.61). He refers to two words in connection with shooting barbed shafts, *viz.* *sapatrā* when the arrow with the barbed end gets stuck inside the body of the animal, and *nishpatrā* when the barbed end pierces the body from one side with such force as to emerge on the other (V.4.61). Wounding an animal in the right flank was known as *dakshiṇermā*⁴ (V.4.126) in the hunter's slang (*lubdhayoga*). It was less fatal than the shot in the left side, and hence the need of the term in the language, for it was of some consequence to the hunter to know whether the game had been pierced in the right or the left flank.