40 HOPKINS— MAGIC OBSERVANCES IN HINDU EPIC. [April 21, 



knowledge in respect of raising the dead is inferior to that of 

 Usanas ; but otherwise he seems to be more important than his rival. 

 But the epic is too catholic to contrast the fourth Veda (of Brhas- 

 pati) with the others to their disadvantage except in one passage 

 not hitherto known. 



This passage is of great importance not only in what it says but 

 in showing how the epic was composed. It is found only in the so- 

 called Southern recension, and like most of the long interpolations 

 in that recension is a late addition to the epic.^ 



In still another passage of this recension Brhaspati is represented 

 as inculcating such extreme liberality as to say that a good Alleccha 

 (barbarian) is better than a sinful Brahman; but in this particular 

 addition he declaims against the other Vedas, which are all infe- 

 rior to the Atharva as aids to the king. For the office of Purohit, 

 king's priest, only an Atharvan priest should be chosen. The other 

 Vedas have nothing to do with " pacificatory, auspicious, and evil- 

 averting matters." These Vedas were " cursed by Yajfiavalkya." 

 Moreover : " The priest of the Rig- Veda is destructive to the realm ; 

 the Sama-Veda priest is destructive to the king; and the Vajasa- 

 neyaka is destructive to the army." Here ahhicarana or sorcery 

 is expressly mentioned as one of the objects to which the king's 

 priest devotes himself. This passage, interpolated, together with 

 an extract from Usanas, into the seventy-third chapter of the twelfth 

 book (thirty-seven verses between B.2a-b and c-d), goes far beyond 

 the general rule of the epic, such as is given in 12.165.22, " Let one 

 skilled in the Vaitana be the hotr." It mentions eighteen kinds 

 of pacificatory ceremonies and calls the Yajurveda priest the Vajin 

 and Caraka, giving the preference to the former as the holder of the 

 office of king's priest. After them are admissible the Rig- Veda and 

 Sama-Veda priests (as Purohits), provided they are duly conversant 

 with the Atharva-Veda. All this means that the priest of the 

 spell (brahina) must be preferred to all other priests for the cere- 

 monies of magic and that the especial patron of this priest is the 

 great " lord of the spell," Brhaspati, whose Veda is authoritative. 



^ On this point see a special article by the writer soon to be published on 

 the Southern recension. The recension is a strong witness against the theory 

 that the epic was composed " in one stream." 



