Anuvaka 3
Suktas in Anuvaka 3
Sukta 21
This brief healing-and-nourishment hymn empowers the keśavardhanī (hair-increasing) herb by rooting its potency in Bhūmi/Pṛthivī, the supreme support of plant-life and medicine. It “collects” the remedy from the earth’s outer skin (tvac), then exalts the herb as foremost among remedies and finally addresses the herbs as bountiful, invincible agents that strengthen and increase hair.
Sukta 22
AV 6.22 is a compact apām-bhaiṣajya hymn that treats waters—especially rain charged with Marutic force—as a living medicine that opens, moistens, and revives the earth and the body. It links cosmic hydrology (clouds, rain, ṛta) with practical healing: waters enrich herbs with sap, increase nourishment, and wash away dryness and disorder. By praising the waters’ orderly descent and their sweetening power, the hymn frames recovery as a restoration of right flow—within land, plants, and persons.
Sukta 23
AV 6.23 is a compact healing charm that summons the divine Waters as an always-available medicine—flowing by day and by night—to cleanse, cool, and restore. It treats water not merely as a substance but as a ritually “woven-in” power that loosens and expels affliction immediately, and it closes by placing the rite under Savitar’s sacred impulsion so that Waters and Herbs act benignly for welfare.
Sukta 24
This short healing hymn invokes the Waters (Āpas) as divine physicians whose flowing, gathered, and confluence-born potency becomes a tangible medicine. It seeks especially saṅgama-jala (meeting-point water) and river-system water under Sindhu’s sovereignty to wash out burning pains and to bestow a “heart-illumining” remedy that restores inner ease and clarity.
Sukta 25
AV 6.25 is a compact Atharvanic expulsion-charm that drives away clustered afflictions—named as vākāḥ—imagined as swarming forces that “press upon” specific body-joints (neck, shoulder) and must be banished from the patient’s sphere. By enumerating these agents in escalating groups (five/fifty; seven/seventy; nine/ninety), the hymn ritually “counts out” and disperses them, sealing the cure through the performative power of brahman (effective speech). Its power is apotropaic: it does not bargain with the illness but commands it to vanish ‘from here’ through a forceful dismissal formula.
Sukta 26
AV 6.26 is a compact Atharvanic expulsion-charm that confronts Pāpmán (evil, disease, misfortune) directly and compels it to release the patient. It combines healing intent (restoring the sufferer to the “world of the auspicious”) with a harsher transfer-logic: if the evil clings, it is redirected away—ultimately to an enemy—under the enforcement of the “thousand‑eyed Immortal.”
Sukta 27
This short Atharvavedic śānti-charm neutralizes the ominous appearance of a pigeon at or in the house, interpreted as a messenger of Nirṛti (calamity). By reframing the bird as potentially auspicious under divine control and by anchoring protection at the hearth (Agni), the hymn “releases” the household from the omen’s grip and secures śam (weal) for both people and livestock.
Sukta 28
This short arishta-kṣayaṇa hymn neutralizes an ill-omen that has “attached” itself to the household—figured as the kapota (pigeon)—by driving it out through the force of ṛc (effective metrical speech) aided by bait. It then secures the domestic sphere with a protective circuit around Agni and cattle, and finally propitiates Yama/Mṛtyu so that the ominous trajectory is cut off without draining the home’s ūrj (vital prosperity). In three compact movements, the sukta converts omen into departure, danger into guarded prestige (śravas), and fatality into appeased distance.
Sukta 29
AV 6.29 is a compact ariṣṭa-nivāraṇa hymn that neutralizes household ill-omens produced by omen-birds—especially the owl’s cry and the pigeon’s ominous contact with the domestic fire. It reframes these signs as empty (mogha), blocks Nirṛti’s entry through her “messengers,” and ritually redirects the threatening force away for the span of the year, toward a banishment-destination associated with Yama.
Sukta 30
AV 6.30 is a compact Atharvanic charm-cycle that harnesses plant-power in two modes: expiation and prosperity through a honeyed barley rite, and rivalry-control through the personified Śamī tree’s deranging “māda.” It simultaneously clears hostile or competing growth (symbolic and literal) while securing household favor—especially protection of children and the pacification of hair/appearance as a locus of social vulnerability.
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