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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32.s4: § 4. The Attraction of Beneficial Substances and Powers

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32.s4

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§ 4. The Attraction of Beneficial Substances and Powers

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The sacrificer must avail himself of the same means to attack his enemies as they use to attack him: if the enemy assail, the skilled priest can send against them the demon Apvā which seems to be the diarrhœa caused by terror, and to symbolize in emphatic fashion the fear produced by panic in battle: this performance is already recorded in the Rigveda.⁷ So also it is perfectly in keeping with the ideas of magic that terror and fear would be conveyed to the enemy by the process of sending a white-footed one, presumably a sheep, against the opposing host.⁸ In such a case Apvā is indeed a dreadful thing, but it is in the control of the priest and therefore useful to him. In other cases he has more direct control: he can use one substance for washing himself, another he can drink or eat, another use as an amulet; with yet another he can rub or anoint himself.⁹ The avoidance of the touch of anything dangerous is one side of a practice, of which the other is the touching of things which are beneficial. The touching of the victim has two sides: it may convey the death to which the victim is being led, but it may also convey—and this is the view which Brahman logic¹⁰ finally adopts—the power and strength of the divine essence. Hence we have an enormous number of rites, the standing on a tiger-skin to obtain royal power, the use of an antelope-skin, the placing of the wife on a bull's hide, the placing of her and of the student upon a stone to attain firmness, the depositing at the fire-piling and other offerings on the place of the fire altar of a piece of earth from an ant-heap, since the ants as finders of waters give richness: the same ants *per contra* are often used to destroy dangerous substances like the remnants of offerings.

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⁷ RV. x. 103. 12; Kauç. xiv. 21.

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⁸ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xvii. 269; Kauç. xiv. 22, 23. Caland, however, thinks that an arrow with white feathers is meant.

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⁹ AV. xix. 45. 5.

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¹⁰ ÇB. iii. 8. 1. 10.

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Various strange messes are prescribed for eating: the least unpleasant may be the mixture of milk, of cow-dung, of bdellion, and salt which is taken at an agricultural offering: the burying of a similar mess could, however, produce equal results.¹ The wife must eat a barley-corn with two beans attached to secure a male² and a strong infant. A peculiarly unpleasant drink, in which the members of a cow form an element, will secure all desires. The common eating of the king and the priest³ and of the bride and bridegroom show that unity of essence was thus produced: it may be conjectured⁴ that the Tānūnaptra ceremony was originally of this kind, though the common eating has disappeared. The idea would then be that he who injured any of those united to him by the common meal would injure himself. The use of anointing is often recorded: an enemy might be injured by anointing sweat on reed arrow-points and offering them.⁵ The king and the sacrificer at the royal consecration and the Sautrāmaṇī were formally anointed and so on. Other means are breathing, as upon the new-born child to give it life, and the putting of substances in the nose to produce offspring.⁶

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¹ Kauç. xx. 25; xix. 9.

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² HGS. ii. 2. 2, 3; AGS. i. 13. 2.

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³ Weber, *Rājasūya*, p. 140; Kauç. xvii; Kauç. xii. 7 has a ceremony of eating in common to procure harmony.

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⁴ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*¹, p. 502, n. 4; cf. below, § 7.

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⁵ Kauç. xlvii. 44.

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⁶ ÇGS. i. 24. 2.

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The eyes should not see many things, such as the taboos imposed on the Snātaka and his teacher, but, on the other hand, the eye may have purifying influence, and hence with the eye of Mitra the guest may look on what is given to him.⁷ But the glance of a snake is deadly,⁸ and so may the glance of the bride be: therefore her husband places salve on her eyes to secure his safety.⁹

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⁷ VS. v. 34.

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⁸ AB. vi. 1; KB. xxix. 1.

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⁹ RV. x. 85. 44; ÇGS. i. 16. 5. On the evil eye see Caland, *Zauberritual*, p. 79, n. 27.

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In a number of interesting cases effective results are produced by using in the rite things connected with the object to be attained. Thus for a prince in exile it is well in the rite to use, for the kindling wood to cook a magic drink, wood from a stump of a tree which has grown again, or to place on the fire altar earth from his old realm. To defeat the ants when troublesome the use of a ladle of Bādhaka wood is valuable, as Bādhaka means ‘repelling’. If victory in battle is the object, earth which a boar has torn up may be placed on the altar, and thus give the rite the strength of the boar.

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In other cases burying things produces good results, as in the burying above referred to of a curious mixture for the prosperity of the herds: so too the burying of hair and other objects such as nails. On the other hand, it is necessary to provide rites to dig up objects, such as one’s own hair and nails, which an enemy has buried: a special ceremony for this is mentioned in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā.¹⁰

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¹⁰ v. 2. 11; ÇB. iii. 5. 4.

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For the purpose of protection the use of amulets is very common indeed: it is not indeed quite clear exactly what idea was conceived to be embodied in the use of these amulets. In the opinion of Oldenberg,¹ the view taken of the amulet was, in the first instance, that there was in it a spirit which took its abode therein, but in the period of the Vedic belief the view had been altered by a process of development, so that the effect of the amulet is produced by a substance resident therein.² It is, however, a little difficult to accept this view of the development of ideas. The view that the first element is spirit, and that the belief in the utility of the amulet is due to the view that a spirit is living in it, is unnecessarily refined: the fact, admitted by Oldenberg, that the amulet is not rarely addressed and treated as having an actual spirit in it, is most naturally of all explained by the fact of animatism: the amulet is conceived to be a living substance: only by a natural development of thought is there any element of a non-spiritual substance found. Animism in the strict sense of the word, therefore, need hardly come into operation, in so far as it postulates the belief in a mere detachable spirit.

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¹ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 512, 513. Cf. AV. x. 6. 5 for a clear case of the amulet as living. Henry (*La magie dans l'Inde antique*, pp. 89–92) suggests that the *srāktya* amulet owes its name to its form, which was like that of the Semitic ‘seal of Solomon’ amulet and was borrowed from Semites, but this is needless; cf. AV. ii. 11; viii. 5; Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. 675. For comparison of Teutonic use of amulets see SBE. xlii. 409.

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² Cf. ERE. ii. 392 ff.; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 22 f.

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The potency of nakedness as a magic rite is seldom mentioned save for rain spells: the Kauçika³, however, tells how to expiate a day of ill omen by sitting naked and rubbing the forehead, and in its collection of spells for inducing slumber in women it prescribes nakedness in the performer of a rite, consisting in the besprinkling of the place where she is from a vessel full of water and the remains of an offering.

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³ xxxviii. 4 and xxxvi. According to Henry (*op. cit.*, p. 109) nudity has this value because it brings man back to his primitive dress; cf. Zachariae, *Kl. Sch.*, pp. 238 f.; Samter, *Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod*, pp. 112 ff.; Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, p. 188. For nudity in rain ritual cf. Mitra, JRAS. 1897, pp. 471–84; Frazer, *Golden Bough*³, i. 283 ff.

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