8. Terrible are Indra's missiles (hetí), a hundred spears of iron; with them let him push out the oblation-eating, ávakā-eating Gandharvas.
Half our mss., and the large majority of SPP's, read at the end of this verse ṛṣata; both editions give ṛṣatu, as in the next verse. Avakā is defined as a certain grass-like marsh-plant, Blyxa octandra, the same with çāivala or çāivāla; the comm. defines it as jaloparisthāḥ çāivālaviçeṣāḥ, but attempts no explanation of why the Gandharvas should be supposed to eat it. He reads in b çatapṛṣṭīs (one feels tempted to emend rather to çatábhṛṣṭīs), and in c abhihradān (for haviradān). The Anukr. takes no notice of the redundant syllable in c (also in 9 c).
9. Terrible are Indra's missiles, a hundred spears of gold; with them let him push out the oblation-eating, ávakā-eating Gandharvas.
This very slightly varied repetition of vs. 8 is wanting in Ppp. All the mss. have ṛṣatu at the end here.
10. The ávakā-eating ones, scorching, making light (?) in the waters—all the piçācás, O herb, do thou slaughter and overpower.
All our pada—mss. read in b jyotaya॰māmakā́n as a compound, and it seems very strange that SPP. gives in both forms of text jyotaya māmakā́n, as two independent words, and reports nothing different as found in any of his authorities; it is perhaps an oversight on his part. Either reading being plainly untranslatable, the rendering given implies emendation to jyotayamānakā́n, as the simplest and most probable alteration; several cases of such expansions of a participle in māna by an added -ka occur ⌊Skt. Gram. §1222 g, f; cf. Bloomfield's note⌋, one of them (pravartamānaká) even in RV. Ppp. reads as follows: avakāçaṁ abhiçāco bicchi dyātayamānakāṁ: gandharvān sarvān oṣadhe kṛṇu tasvaparāyaṇaḥ; this supports the proposed reading in its most essential feature, -māna- for -māma-, and further favors the version of the comm., dyot- for jyot-. R., in the Festgruss an Böhtlingk (p. 97), had ingeniously conjectured the word as a name for the will-o'-the-wisp, deriving it from jyotaya mām 'give me light,' by an added suffix -aka. The comm. paraphrases by matsambandhino gandharvān udakeṣu prakāçaya. ⌊Cf. Whitney, Festgruss an Roth, p. 91; also note to ii. 3. 1.⌋
11. One as it were a dog, one as it were an ape, a boy all hairy—having become as it were dear to see, the Gandharva fastens upon (sac) women; him we make disappear from here by [our] mighty (vīryàvant) incantation (bráhman).
In our edition, stríyam at the end of d is a misprint for stríyas, which all the mss. have, with no avasāna-mark following, though distinctly called for by the sense, and therefore supplied by us; Ppp., however, reads striyam, with sajate before it; and it omits the last pāda, f: which omission would furnish an excuse for the absence of interpunction after stríyas.
12. Your wives, verily, are the Apsarases; O Gandharvas, ye are [their] husbands; run away, O immortal ones; fasten not on mortals.
All the pada-mss. commit in c the palpable error of dividing dhāvatāmartyā(ḥ) into dhāvata: martyāḥ, as if the ā which follows dhāvat- were one of the common prolongations of a final vowel in saṁhitā; the comm., however, understands amartyāḥ, and SPP. admits this by emendation into his pada-text. Ppp. has for c apakrāmat puruṣād amartyā, which supports amartyās in our text.
