Note 1. The phrase gánayah ná sáptayah is obscure. As gáni has always the meaning of wife, and sápti in the singular, dual, and plural means horse, it might be supposed that gánayah could be connected with sáptayah, so as to signify mares. But although gáni is coupled with patnî, I, 62, 10, in the sense of mother-wife, and though sápti is most commonly joined with some other name for horse, yet gánayah sáptayah never occurs, for the simple reason that it would be too elaborate and almost absurd an expression for vadavâh. We find sápti joined with vâgín, I, 162, 1; with ráthya, II, 31, 7; átyam ná sáptim, III, 22, 1; sáptî hárî, III, 35, 2; ásvâ sáptî-iva, VI, 59, 3.

We might then suppose the thought of the poet to have been this: What appears before us like race-horses, viz. the storms coursing through the sky, that is really the host of the Maruts. But then gánayah remains unexplained, and it is impossible to take gánayah ná sáptayah as two similes, like unto horses, like unto wives.

I believe, therefore, that we must here take sápti in its original etymological sense, which would be ju-mentum, a yoked animal, a beast of draught, or rather a follower, a horse that will follow. Sápti, therefore, could never be a wild horse, but always a tamed horse, a horse that will go in harness. Cf. IX, 21, 4. hitâ´h ná sáptayah ráthe, like horses put to the chariot; or in the singular, IX, 70, 10. hitáh ná sáptih, like a harnessed horse. The root is sap, which in the Veda means to follow, to attend on, to worship. But if sápti means originally animals that will go

together, it may in our passage have retained the sense of yoke-fellow (σύζυγος), and be intended as an adjective to gánayah, wives. There is at least one other passage where this meaning would seem to be more appropriate,. viz.

VIII, 20, 23. yûyám sakhâyah saptayah.

You (Maruts), friends and followers! or you, friends and comrades!

Here it is hardly possible to assign to sápti the sense of horse, for the Maruts, though likened to horses, are never thus barely invoked as saptayah!