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नावप्रभ्रंशन (nAvaprabhraMzana)

 
Monier Williams Cologne
English
नाव—प्रभ्रं॑शन
n.
N.
 of a place,
AV.
Vedic Reference
English
Nāva-prabhraṃśana, the ‘sliding down of the ship, ’ is read
in Whitney and Roth's text of the Atharvaveda, ^1 and has been
connected by Weber^2 and others^3 with Manor Avasarpaṇa, the
name in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa^4 of the northern mountain
on which Manu's ship settled on the subsidence of the deluge.
But both Bloomfield^5 and Whitney^6 point out that this inter-
pretation is highly improbable, and this view is accepted by
Macdonell.^7 The expression is analyzed as na ava-prabhraṃśana
by the Pada text and the commentator alike, and is never found
elsewhere with reference to the descent of a boat or ship.^8
1) xix. 39, 8, where the reading nāva-
prabhráṃśana is a conjectural emendā-
tion, the manuscripts of the Saṃhitā
text all having two accents, nāvapra-
bhráṃśana (one of them reading nāvaḥ-).
2) Indische Streifen, 1, 11.
3) Cf. Ludwig, Translation of the
Rigveda, 3, 198
Eggeling, Sacred Books
of the East, 12, 218, n.
Zimmer, Altin-
disches Leben, 30.
4) i. 8, 1, 6.
5) Hymns of the Atharvaveda, 679.
6) Translation of the Atharvaveda,
961.
7) Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,
1907, 1107, where his acceptance of
Weber's interpretation in his Sanskrit
Literature, 144, is withdrawn.
8) The word nau, ship, never occurs
as the first member of a compound in
the form of nāva, while pra-bhraṃś,
‘fall down, ’ is never used of the
gliding down of a boat, and would be
inappropriately applied in that sense.