THE TEXT · ATHARVAVEDA
Hymns discussed in this article
These verses give the wording and sequence examined in the article below.
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK II IN FOCUS
Against curses and cursers: with a plant
Hated by mischief, god-born, the curse-effacing plant hath washed away from me all curses, as waters do filth.
Both the curse that is a rival's, and the curse that is a sister's, what a priest (? brahmán) from fury may curse—all that [be] underneath our feet.
From the sky [is] the root stretched down, from off the earth stretched up; with this, thousand-jointed (-kā́ṇḍa), do thou protect us about on all sides.
Protect me about, my progeny, [and] what riches are ours; let not the niggard get the better (tṛ) of us; let not hostile plotters get the better of us.
Read the remaining 1 verse of II.7
Let the curse go to the curser; our [part] is along with him that is friendly (suhā́rd); of the eye-conjurer (-mántra), the unfriendly, we crush in the ribs (pṛṣṭí).
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read II.7 at Wikisource ↗
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK IV IN FOCUS
Against witchcraft: with a plant
The same light with the sun—night possesses the same with the day; I make what is effective (satyá) for aid; sapless be the makers (f.) [of witchcraft].
Whoso, O gods, having made witchcraft, shall take it to the house of one unknowing—let it, like a sucking (dhārú) calf to its mother, go back unto him.
Whoso, having made evil at home, desires to slay another with it—numerous stones make a loud crash when it (f.) is burned.
O thou of a thousand abodes (? -dhā́man), do thou make them lie (?) crestless, neckless; take back the witchcraft to him that made it, like a sweet-heart (priyā́) to a lover (priyā́vant).
Read the remaining 4 verses of IV.18
I, with this herb, have spoiled all witchcrafts—what one they have made in the field, what in the kine, or what in thy men (púruṣa).
He who hath made hath not been able to make; he hath crushed (çṛ) a foot, a finger; he hath made what is excellent for us, but for himself a burning (tápana).
Let the off-wiper wipe off the kṣetriyá and whatever curse [there is]; [wipe] off, forsooth, the sorceresses, off all the hags.
Having wiped off the sorcerers, off all the hags, O off-wiper, with thee do we wipe off all that.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read IV.18 at Wikisource ↗
A plant ally and a returning harm
The verse gives misfortune an addressee or image rather than leaving anxiety entirely undefined. The poem can render fear speakable without proving who, if anyone, caused a setback. II.7 recruits a plant, while IV.18 reverses the imagined path of harm.
II.7 calls on a plant to oppose hostile words, while IV.18 imagines harmful work traveling back toward its source. The first adds an ally; the second turns a trajectory around. The difference in direction is so vivid that one umbrella term, “counter-curse,” hardly holds it.
How a countercharm changes direction
Both make danger speakable, yet one emphasizes a protective vegetal ally and the other reverses a threatening trajectory. Once danger is named, the verse can push it away, return it, or ask for support against it. Calling every passage a protection spell loses the particular threat each one has chosen to address. The first supplies an ally; the second redraws direction. Those are rival solutions to a named anxiety.
II.7 beside IV.18
A comparison of II.7 and IV.18 shows two narrative models rather than one universal counterspell. The adjacent verse may respond to a feared sign rather than the same hostile agent. Changing the threat also changes the relation the poem proposes between fear and relief.
The plant washes, lowers, surrounds, and returns
II.7 itself has more than one defensive motion. Verse 1 imagines the plant washing curses off like water washing filth. Verse 2 places curses from a rival, a close female relative, or an angry priest underfoot. Verse 3 roots the plant between sky and earth and asks its thousand joints for all-around protection; verse 4 includes progeny and riches. Only in verse 5 does a curse go back to its curser. The older article's plant-versus-return contrast is useful as a difference of emphasis, but II.7 contains return as one stage of its own sequence. Whitney notes the hymn is absent from Pāippalāda, and the plant's exact identification is given by the commentator rather than established by the verse alone.
IV.18 gives the return a plot
In IV.18.2, a made witchcraft carried to an unknowing house is told to go back to its maker like a suckling calf to its mother. Verse 4 changes the analogy to a beloved returning to a lover. Both images present return as recognition of an intimate origin, although the speaker has supplied no verifiable identity for the maker. Verse 5 widens the suspected placement to field, cattle, and people; verse 6 asserts the maker's failure. That development is more elaborate than II.7.5's brief order that a curse return to the curser. Whitney reports Pāippalāda's reversal of IV.18's fifth and sixth verses and uncertainty in verse 3's stones and burning. Those witness limits matter more than any modern attempt to reconstruct a counterspell procedure.
WORKED READING
Worked reading: II.7 beside IV.18
II.7 calls on a plant against hostile words. IV.18 pictures a threatening act returning toward its origin. One uses an ally, the other a reversed path. The plant remains near the threatened speaker in one poem. In the other, hostile action is pictured as something that can be reversed. These are poetic accounts of safety, not evidence that any named neighbor caused harm; the imagined motion itself is what makes each text distinctive.