THE TEXT · ATHARVAVEDA
Hymns discussed in this article
Begin with the verses shown here. Open the other cited hymns to compare their images and aims.
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK II IN FOCUS
Against kimīdíns, male and female
O çerabhaka, çerabha! back again let your familiar demons go; back again your missile, ye kimīdíns! whose ye are, him eat ye; who hath sent you forth, him eat ye; eat your own flesh.
O çevṛdhaka, çévṛdha! back again let your familiar etc. etc.
O mroká, anumroka! back again let your familiar etc. etc.
O sarpá, anusarpa! back again let your familiar etc. etc.
Read the remaining 4 verses of II.24
O júrṇī! back again let your familiar demons go; back again your missile, ye she-kimīdíns; whose ye are etc. etc.
O upabdi! back again let your familiar etc. etc.
O árjunī! back again let your familiar etc. etc.
O bharūjī! back again. let your familiar etc. etc.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read II.24 at Wikisource ↗
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK V ALSO CITED
Against witchcraft: with a plant
Read comparison hymn V.14 (13 verses)
An eagle (suparṇá) discovered thee; a hog dug thee with his snout; seek thou to injure, O herb, him that seeks to injure; smite down the witchcraft-maker.
Smite down the sorcerers, smite down the witchcraft-maker; then, whoever seeks to injure us, him do thou smite, O herb.
Having cut around out of [his] skin a strip (pariçāsá), as it were of a stag, fasten, O gods, upon the witchcraft-maker the witchcraft, like a necklace.
Lead thou away the witchcraft back to the witchcraft-maker, grasping its hand; set it straight before (samakṣám) him, that it may smite the witchcraft-maker.
Be the witchcrafts for the witchcraft-maker, the curse for him that curses; like an easy chariot let the witchcraft roll back to the witchcraft-maker.
If woman, or if man, hath made witchcraft in order to evil, it we conduct unto him, like a horse by a horse-halter.
If either thou art god-made, or if made by man, thee, being such, do we lead back, with Indra as ally.
O Agni, overpowerer of fighters, overpower the fighters; we take the witchcraft back to the witchcraft-maker by a returner.
O practiced piercer (?), pierce him; whoever made [it], him do thou smite; we do not sharpen thee up to slay (vadhá) him who has not made [it].
Go as a son to a father; like a constrictor trampled on, bite; go, O witchcraft, back to the witchcraft-maker, as it were treading down [thy] bond.
Up, like a she-antelope (eṇī́), a she-elephant (? vāraṇī́), with leaping on, like a hind, let the witchcraft go to its maker.
Straighter than an arrow let it fly, O heaven-and-earth, to meet him; let it, the witchcraft, seize again him, the witchcraft-maker, like a deer.
Let it go like fire up-stream, like water down-stream; like an easyc hariot let the witchcraft roll back to the witchcraft-maker.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read V.14 at Wikisource ↗
Names enter a stable refrain
The first unit addresses a pair of named figures, then orders familiar demons and a missile back. The same message recurs after new names in the following units. Whitney suggests the prefatory words are names of kimīdins, though he avoids confident translation for most of them. This is important to the hymn’s form. A modern explanation need not invent a personality or mythology for each sound in the list. Their changing names let a stable dismissal be applied again and again. The refrain supplies the action: leave the speaker, find the sender, and turn destructive appetite inward. The names supply range rather than a narrative with characters developing across verses.
The feminine sequence broadens the target
The fifth unit explicitly speaks to female kimīdins, and the later names continue that series. The shift shows that the poem’s catalog is not restricted to one gendered form of danger. It does not say women in the community are the senders; the grammatical figures are feared beings in the incantation. Keeping that distinction avoids converting a textual category into an accusation against real people. Whitney notes that a cluster of the four feminine names might form a different metrical arrangement, although the received hymn presents eight units. This raises a question about how the names and refrain were assembled, without changing the repeated demand that hostile forces turn away.
Return is harsher than simple departure
The refrain does not merely ask the spirits to vanish. It tells them to go back to the person to whom they belong, to eat the one who sent them, and finally to consume their own flesh. These successive objects of appetite make the return punishing and self-destructive. The poem’s logic is that a danger introduced from elsewhere should reverse course and undo its own source. That is a severe retaliatory fantasy, not a method for establishing who sent anything. The force of the passage rests on a claimed origin that the speaker cannot demonstrate within the text. The name of a sender is never supplied.
A different return in V.14
V.14 also directs a feared working back to its alleged maker, but there a plant helps a personified kṛtyā travel by hand, chariot, horse, and other images. II.24 turns on vocatives and a repeated command to named beings. V.14.9 distinguishes the maker from the nonmaker, while II.24 simply states that the beings should attack whoever sent them. Whitney reports that only part of II.24 appears in Pāippalāda and that the parallel is badly corrupt. A later Kauśikasūtra use in a prosperity ceremony is also not specific enough to solve the text’s problems. The received refrain is clear; the full history and identity of every name are not.
WORKED READING
One refrain after two kinds of name
Compare II.24.1 with .5. Both command a return of familiars and missiles, but the fifth explicitly addresses female kimīdins after earlier named figures. The same response crosses that change in target. Now compare V.14.4, which leads a constructed working back by the hand. II.24 does not escort a single object; it repeatedly commands a class of feared beings to reverse direction and turn on their source. The distinction explains how its repetitive list produces force without a changing plot. The fifth verse's specifically female target makes the catalog less abstract, yet the poem never establishes that such beings actually attacked anyone.