The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32.s7.1

v2.c32.s7.1

The power of the word is very marked in all systems of magic and naturally not least in India. The magic spell is sometimes in prose, in the style of the formulae used by the Adhvaryus at the sacrifice, more often in verse, sometimes newly made for the purpose, sometimes, and indeed very often, chosen without any appropriateness from the vast body of existing sacred literature. Of this latter tendency two examples may be given: the number available is legion. The finest hymn to Varuṇa in the Vedic literature is found in the Atharvaveda where it has been preserved in a charm.⁵ The great hymn of the Rigveda, which celebrates the god Prajāpati in the form of questions, has the second verse used in a spell for preventing the miscarriage of a cow, doubtless for no better reason than that the idiotic system on which names of authors were assigned to every hymn of the collection resulted in postulating an author Hiraṇyagarbha, 'he of the golden womb', really an epithet of the supreme god, and the fact that the deity was Prajāpati.⁶