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 VI IN FOCUS
To crush an enemy
When (yát) I eat, I make strength; thus do I take the thunderbolt, cutting to pieces (çat) the shoulders of him yonder, as Cachīpati of Vritra.
When I drink, I drink up, an up-drinker like the ocean; drinking up the breath of him yonder, we drink him up.
When I swallow, I swallow up, a swallower-up like the ocean; swallowing up the breath of him yonder, we swallow him up.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read VI.135 at Wikisource ↗
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK VI ALSO CITED
Against enemies
Read comparison hymn VI.104 (3 verses)
With tying-up, with tying-together, we tie up the enemies; the expirations and breaths of them, lives with life (ásu) have I cut off.
This tying-up have I made, sharpened up with fervor by Indra; our enemies that are here—them, O Agni, do thou tie up.
Let Indra-and-Agni tie them up, and king Soma, allied; let Indra with the Maruts make tying-up for our enemies.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read VI.104 at Wikisource ↗
Food becomes personal force
Verse 1 begins with eating, an act that normally sustains the body. The speaker says it produces strength, then takes up a thunderbolt and imagines cutting the shoulders of a distant opponent as Indra cut down Vṛtra. The leap from meal to divine weapon is abrupt but intelligible: nourishment is recast as martial capacity. The shoulders are important because they carry arms; attacking them undermines a fighter’s ability to wield force. Whitney notes a textual difficulty in the line about the thunderbolt, and Pāippalāda phrases it differently. The large analogy remains clear: the speaker’s own bodily intake is presented as the starting point of another person’s loss.
Drinking reaches beyond ordinary scale
Verse 2 changes from eating to drinking and compares the speaker to the ocean, able to take in vastly more than a human vessel. The target becomes the adversary’s breath. The phrase repeated around drinking makes the act sound ongoing and exhaustive, as if each sip adds to a process of depletion elsewhere. The ocean is not a practical ingredient; it is an image of capacity without an obvious limit. Pāippalāda changes the wording of the final half of the verse, showing that the exact repeated formulation varied. It would be unwarranted to infer a fixed technical procedure from one English translation. The poem’s rhetorical relation between consuming and depriving is the secure observation.
Swallowing repeats and intensifies
Verse 3 begins a third time with an action of intake, swallowing, and again invokes oceanic scale. The desired object is still the breath of the person “yonder.” Repeating breath rather than introducing a new target makes the last verse feel like an intensification of verse 2. Eating made the speaker strong; drinking and swallowing imagine the adversary emptied of life. Whitney remarks on a problematic accent in the received form and reports another Pāippalāda wording. The witnesses agree on the broad pattern of consumption, but not every detail of its grammar. This is a short poem whose repetition does much of its argumentative work.
A contrast with battle binding
VI.104 also speaks harshly of cutting off enemy breaths, but it gets there by tying an army and calling divine allies to bind it. VI.135 begins with the speaker’s own body. Its pronouns focus on an unnamed individual opponent “yonder,” not on ranks of soldiers under ensigns. The comparison separates two violent imaginations of lost vitality: restraint in a collective battle, and absorption through personal eating and drinking. The later Kauśikasūtra places VI.135 in a hostile ritual setting with nearby hymns, yet the three verses themselves contain no evidence of an actual physical effect. They make the speaker’s meal and drink into an image of domination.
WORKED READING
The change from eating to drinking
Read VI.135.1 beside .2. In the first verse, eating strengthens the speaker and leads to an image of Indra’s thunderbolt. In the second, drinking no longer simply nourishes him; it drains the adversary’s breath, with the ocean as a comparison. Verse 3 repeats that loss through swallowing. VI.104.1 also targets breath, but through a tied enemy army. The contrast shows why the everyday verbs of VI.135, not only its hostile result, are central to the poem. Eating and drinking are therefore not neutral bodily acts in the poem; each becomes a way to imagine unequal survival.