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मृगहस्तिन् (mRgahastin)

 
Vedic Reference
English
3. Mṛga Hastin, the ‘animal with a hand, ’ is mentioned in
two passages of the Rigveda, ^1 in which Roth^2 recognizes that
the elephant is meant, but concludes that the compound name
is a proof of the newness of the elephant to the Vedic Indians.^3
Later the adjective Hastin alone became the regular name of
the animal (like Mahiṣa of the ‘buffalo’). The elephant is
also denoted in the Rigveda by the descriptive term Mṛga
Vāraṇa, ^4 the ‘wild or dangerous animal, ’ the adjective vāraṇa
similarly becoming one of the names for ‘elephant’ in the later
language. Pischel's view^5 that the catching of elephants by
the use of tame female elephants is already alluded to in the
Rigveda^6 seems very doubtful. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa^7
elephants are described as ‘black, white-toothed, adorned with
gold.’
1) i. 64, 7
iv. 16, 14.
2) St. Petersburg Dictionary, s.v.
Nirukta, Erläuterungen, 79.
3) Pischel, Vedische Studien, 1, 99, 100,
combats the view that the elephant was
new to the Vedic Indian, because of
the similar use of mṛga mahiṣa and
mṛga sūkara (Av. xii. 1, 48) to denote
the ‘buffalo’ and the ‘boar’ respec-
tively. But Mahiṣa seems rather to
bear out Roth's conclusion
while
Sūkara appears alone in the Rigveda,
and mṛga sūkara, ‘wild hog, ’ seems to
be used in one passage of the Av.
(xii. 1, 48) to distinguish it from Varāha,
‘boar, ’ in the same verse.
4) Rv. viii. 33, 8
x. 40, 8.
5) Vedische Studien, 2, 121-123
317-
319. Cf. Strabo, pp. 704, 705
Arrian,
Indica, 13. 14 (from Megasthenes).
6) viii. 2, 6
x. 40, 8.
7) viii. 23, 3 (hiraṇyena parīvṛtān kṛṣṇāñ
chukladato mṛgān). See Pischel, op. cit.,
2, 122.
Cf. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, 80.