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नाराशंसी (nArAzaMsI)

 
Monier Williams Cologne
English
नाराशंसी (ई),
f.
N.
 of partic. verses or formulas
Vedic Reference
English
Nārāśaṃsī (scil. Ṛc), ‘(verse) celebrating men, ’ is mentioned
as early as the Rigveda, ^1 and is distinguished from Gāthā in
a number of passages in the later literature.^2 The Kāṭhaka
Saṃhitā, ^3 while distinguishing the two, asserts that both are
false (anṛtam). It is hardly probable that the two were abso-
lutely distinct, for the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa^4 has the phrase
‘a Gāthā celebrating men’ (nārāśaṃsī). What such verses
were may be seen from the Śāṅkhāyana Śrauta Sūtra, ^5 which
enumerates the Nārāśaṃsāni at the Puruṣamedha, or ‘human
sacrifice.’ They may legitimately be reckoned as a source of
the epic.^6
The term Nārāśaṃsī is restricted in some passages^7 to a
particular group of three verses of the Atharvaveda, ^8 but
Oldenberg^9 must be right in holding that the restricted sense
is not to be read into the Rigveda.^10 Not even in the Taittirīya
Saṃhitā^11 is the technical sense certain, and the Bṛhaddevatā^12
gives the word a general application.
1) x. 85, 6.
2) Av. xv. 6, 4
Taittirīya Saṃhitā,
vii. 5, 11, 2
Aitareya Brāhmaṇa,
vi. 32
Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa, xxx. 5
Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā, v. 5, 2
Taittirīya
Āraṇyaka, ii. 10, etc.
Weber, Indische
Studien, 5, 78. The passage, Śatapatha
Brāhmaṇa, xi. 5, 6, 8, is uncertain.
See Eggeling, Sacred Books of the East,
44, 98, n. 5.
3) xiv. 5
Weber, Indische Streifen, 1,
98.
4) i. 3, 2, 6.
5) xvi. 11, 1 et seq.
Weber, Episches
im vedischen Ritual, 10 et seq.
6) Hopkins, Journal of the American
Oriental Society, 15, 264, n. Bloomfield,
Atharvaveda, 100 (cf. Hymns of the Athar-
vaveda, 688, 689), lays stress rather on
their character as mere eulogies of
donors, and that, no doubt, was one
of their sides
but the other elements
may have been more prominent in
reality than the priestly tradition
shows.
7) Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, vi. 32
Kauṣī-
taki Brāhmaṇa, xxx. 5. Possibly, in
the other passages mentioned in note 2,
the reference may be to the Atharva-
veda verses, but this is not at all
likely.
8) xx. 127, 1-3 = Śāṅkhāyana Śrauta
Sūtra, xii. 14, 1-3. Cf. Scheftelowitz,
Die Apokryphen des Ṛgveda, 155.
9) Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgen-
ländischen Gesellschaft, 42, 238.
10) x. 85, 6.
11) vii. 5, 11, 2.
12) iii. 154.
Cf. Weber, Episches im Vedischen
Ritual, 4 et seq.