The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32.s7.16

v2.c32.s7.16

The word has special force in the form of the curse, which is often recorded in Vedic literature and which as is well known is one of the most common motives in later Indian literature. Fish are killed out of hand by men, because they betrayed to the gods Agni when he fled for shelter to the waters and for that deed Agni cursed them to be slain by men.¹¹ The trees which caused illness to the gods were cursed by the gods to be destroyed by a handle of the woodman’s axe, made from their own bodies.¹ The curse is often mentioned as being invoked to recoil on the curser himself, showing that it was a common form of magic attack. It might also be heightened in effect by a formal offering, in which the rules of the sacrifice are violated and the points of reeds are sacrificed to the accompaniment of formulae declaring that the sacrificer takes from the enemy, who has played him false with his wife, hope and sight, children and cattle, breathing in and breathing out.² The curse³ in the Brāhmaṇas is constantly expressed in a curious form: if a man performs an act in the offering incorrectly, then he places himself in such a position that, if any one were to say of or to him something unpleasant, that would come true. The point is clear: the mistake exposes the man guilty of it to the risk of the effective working of any curse which is invoked upon him.