according to the one-day (ekaha) ceremonial, is perfect in form. On that day much is done now and then which has to be hidden, and has to be atoned for (by recitation of hymns). Atonement is rest, the one-day sacrifice. Therefore at the end of the year (on the last day but one of the sacrifice that lasts a whole year) the sacrificers rest on this atonement as their rest.

He who knows this rests firm, and they also for whom a Hotri priest who knows this, recites this hymn .

18. These, if recited straight on, are ninety-seven verses . The ninety are three Virag, each consisting of thirty, and then the seven verses which are over. Whatever is the praise of the seven, is the praise of ninety also.

19. By repeating the first and last verses three times each, they become one hundred and one verses.

20. There are five fingers, of four joints each, two pits (in the elbow and the arm), the arm, the eye, the shoulder-blade; this makes twenty-five. The other three parts have likewise twenty-five each . That makes a hundred, and the trunk is the one hundred and first.

21. Hundred is life, health, strength, brightness. The sacrificer as the one hundred and first rests in life, health, strength, and brightness.

22. These verses become Trishtubh , for the noonday-libation consists of Trishtubh verses.

Footnotes

^168:6 The type after which the Marutvatiya-sastra is to be performed is the Katurvimsa day. Hitherto (from a tva ratham to nakih sudasah), all that is taken over from the type to the modification, i. e. the Marutvatiya, has been explained. Now follow the verses which are new and peculiar to the Marutvatiya of the Mahavrata.

^169:1 The commentator endeavours to make the meaning more natural by taking in the word prahanta, he who kills the destroyer of truth. But considering the general character of these remarks, this is hardly necessary.

^169:2 Cf. I, 1, 3, 3.

^169:3 By separating the first trika from the second, and so forth.

^170:1 Cf. Ait. Brahm. V, 16.

^170:2 Cf. Ait. Ar. II, 2, 1, 8.

^170:3 The hymn consists of eleven verses. In the middle, after the sixth verse, nivids or invocations, such as indro marutvan, are inserted, and therefore it is called a nividdhana hymn.

^171:1 With this hymn the Marutvatiya-sastra is finished. All the hymns from a tva ratham to asat su me garitar are simply taken over from the Katurvimsa ceremonial, the rest are peculiar to the Mahavrata day, the day preceding the Udayaniya or final day of the Gavamayana sattra. All this is more fully described in the fifth Aranyaka (V, 1, 1, 8), containing the Sutras or rules of Saunaka, while the earlier Aranyakas are reckoned as Brahmanas, and are therefore mixed up with matters not actually required for the performance of the sacrifice.

^171:2

The first Stotriya and Anurupa trikas =

6 (I, 2, 1, 1).