If the passages hitherto examined were all that occur in the Rig-veda, we might still feel startled at the construction of our verse, where sárdhas is not only followed by masculine adjectives in the singular, but, in the next verse, by a pronoun in the plural. But if we take the last irregularity first, we find the same construction, viz. sárdhas followed by yé, in III, 32, 4:

índrasya sárdhah marútah yé â´san.

The host of Indra, that was the Maruts.

As to the change of genders, we find adjectives in the masculine after sárdhas, in

V, 52, 8. sárdhah mâ´rutam út samsa satyâ-savasam ríbhvasam.

Celebrate the host of the Maruts, the truly vigorous, the brilliant.

Here, too, the poet afterwards continues in the plural, though as he uses the demonstrative, and not, as in our passage, the relative pronoun, we cannot quote this in support of the irregularity which has here to be explained. Anyhow the construction of our verse, though bold and unusual, is not so unusual as to force us to adopt conjectural remedies. In V, 58, 2, we find yé after ganáh. On the Umbrian Çerfo Martio, as possibly the same as sárdha-s mâ´ruta-s, see Grassman, Kuhn's Zeitschrift, vol. xvi, p. 190. The Zend saredha, kind, species, is the same word.

Verse 2.

Wilson: Who, borne by spotted deer, were born self-radiant, with weapons, war-cries, and decorations.

Benfey: Die mit Hirschen and Speeren gleich mit Donnern and mit Blitzen auch—selbststrahlende—geboren sind.

Ludwig: Die mit vilfarbigen speeren, mit der schwerter glanze, sichtbar wurden mit eignem leuchten.

Note 1. The spotted deer (príshatî) are the recognised animals of the Maruts, and were originally, as it would seem, intended for the rain-clouds. Sâyana is perfectly aware of the original meaning of príshatî, as clouds. The legendary school, he says, takes them for deer with white spots, the etymological school for many-coloured lines of clouds: (RV. BH. I, 64, 8.) This passage shows that although príshatî, as Roth observes, may mean a spotted cow or a spotted horse,—the Maruts, in fact, are called sometimes prishat-asvâh, having piebald horses, or, having prishats for their horses, VII, 40, 3,—yet the later tradition in India had distinctly declared in favour of spotted deer. The Vedic poets, however, admitted both ideas, and they speak in the same hymn, nay, in the same verse, of the fallow deer and of the horses of the Maruts. Thus V, 58, 1, the Maruts are called âsú-asvâh, possessed of quick horses; and in V, 58, 6, we read yát prá áyâsishta príshatîbhih ásvaih—ráthebhih, where the gender of príshatîbhih

would hardly allow us to join it with ásvaih, but where we must translate: When you come with the deer, the horses, the chariots, or with your deer, as horses. Ludwig joins prishatîbhih with rishtibhih, and again in I, 64, 8; see note i to I, 87, 4.