Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v2.c4.s7.1426

v2.c4.s7.1426

Vraja denotes in the first instance, in the Rigveda,¹ the place to which the cattle resort (from vraj, ‘go’), the ‘feeding ground’ to which the milk-giving animals go out² in the morning from the village (Grāma), while the others stay in it all day and night.³ Secondarily it denotes the ‘herd’⁴ itself. This is Geldner’s view,⁵ which seems clearly better than that of Roth⁶ who regards Vraja as primarily the ‘enclosure’ (from vrj), and only thence the ‘herd’; for the Vraja does not normally mean an ‘enclosure’ at all: the Vedic cattle were not stall-fed as a general rule. In some passages, however, ‘pen,’⁷ in others ‘stall,’⁸ is certainly meant. The word is often used in the myth of the robbing of the kine.⁹ It occasionally denotes a ‘cistern.’¹⁰