1889.] 



Charles R. Lanman — The NamueM-Mythi 



-29 



garded as the mythical reflex. We are therefore led to inquire, did not 

 the words of the sacred text mean something different from what even 

 the ancients themselves supposed them to mean ? I believe that they 

 did and that the misunderstanding can be accounted for. 



I suggest that the Vedic text be translated : ' With water-foam 

 Namuchi's head, O Indra, thou didst cause to fly asunder, when thou 

 wast conquering all thy foes.' This appears to me intelligible if we 

 assume that the natural phenomenon to which it refers is a waterspout 

 (' trombe ') on an inland lake. How, now, does this view accord with 

 the natural facts in question and with a strict verbal exegesis of the 

 text? 



Major Sherwill has given a description of Bengal waterspouts in the 

 Journal of this Society for 1860, volume XXIX., p. 366 f., along with 

 some excellent pictures. And in a German work of Th. Reye, entitled 

 Die Wirbelstiitrae, p. 17 f., further information and pictorial illustration 

 may be found. The waterspout is of course an object of terror, and 

 it is most natural that it should be personified as a demon. The verb 

 ^wfiljpj means ' cause to rotate,' and the motion is qualified as upward 

 and outward motion by the preposition ^3^. The compound ^3^rf^: 

 means accordingly, ' thou didst cause to move upward and outward or 

 to fly asunder with a gyratory or centrifugal motion.' It is not possible 

 to express by one simple English phrase the ideas involved in the com- 

 pound ; but they seem to me to bo quite simple in themselves and to 

 follow unforced from the Sanskrit and to be thoroughly suitable for the 

 not infrequent phenomenon of a waterspout as seen by unscientific 

 eyes. The head of the column is twisted and made to burst asunder and 

 scatter itself ' with foam ' (^n*T, as an instrumental of accompaniment), 

 i. e., in abundant foamy masses. Then, with the dispersion of the 

 column, often comes (see Sherwill, p. 370, Reye, p. 32) a heavy rain. 

 This is all in entire accord with the usual representations of gracious 

 Indra's deeds of prowess. 



In particular, also, it accords most strikingly with the quite differ- 

 ently expressed idea of Rigveda v. 30. 86 (= vi. 20. 66), where Indra is 

 spoken of as ' twirling (like a stick of attrition or like a churning-stick) 

 the head of the demon Namuchi,' 



and that, immediately after the couplet in stanza 7, 



irt ^iwr finer ^ 



This explanation of the stanza in question, moreover, harmonizes well 

 with the succeeding stanza, Higvoda, viii. 14. 14, 



