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
For success against enemies
Handless be the assailing foe—they who come with armies to fight us; make them, O Indra, collide with the great weapon; let their evildoer (? aghahārá) run (drā), pierced through.
Ye who run (dhāv) stringing [the bow], drawing [the arrow] (ā-yam), hurling—handless are ye, O foes; Indra hath now demolished you.
Handless be the foes; their limbs we make to relax (mlā); then will we, O Indra, share among us their possessions hundred-fold.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read VI.66 at Wikisource ↗
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK VI ALSO CITED
For success against enemies
Read comparison hymn VI.65 (3 verses)
Down (áva) [be] the fury, down the drawn [arrow], down the two mind-yoked arms. O demolisher (parāçará), do thou vex (ard) away the vehemence (çúṣma) of them; then get us wealth.
The handless shaft, O gods, which ye cast at the handless ones—I hew [off] the arms of the foes with this oblation.
Indra made the handless one first for the Asuras. Let my warriors conquer by means of stanch Indra as ally (medín).
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read VI.65 at Wikisource ↗
A whole force is treated as disabled
Verse 1 looks toward opponents coming in armies and asks that they be made handless. Indra is called to send them against a great weapon, while a difficult phrase describes a wrongdoer running off pierced. The opening is not a private confrontation with one person. It pictures a collective advance whose ability to fight is to be removed. Whitney marks one word in the last line uncertain, so the details of the fleeing figure should not be overdefined. The basic shape remains clear: an attack is in progress, and the speaker asks divine force to make those carrying it incapable of completing it.
Verse 2 slows the archery action down
The second verse names three movements: running, stringing the bow, and drawing or hurling the missile. It then addresses those very fighters as already handless and credits Indra with demolishing them. This creates a striking temporal collision. The enemy is described in the act of operating a weapon and at the same time deprived of the ability to operate it. The form of address makes the desired result sound accomplished, though it is a ritual utterance of hope. Whitney records a small textual difference in the last verbal form between edited texts and manuscripts. That detail does not change the verse’s central image of interrupted human action.
The ending reveals the spoils
Verse 3 repeats the handless wish, adds the relaxation of the enemy’s limbs, and asks Indra to let the speaker’s side share possessions a hundredfold. The movement from enemy hands to enemy wealth is not accidental. Hands make fighting and holding property possible; once the opponents are imagined unable to resist, their resources become available for distribution. This is a hard-edged victory scene, not merely a wish for calm after danger. It is important to state the poem’s own interests openly. The request to crush an attacking force includes a request to profit from its collapse.
The preceding hymn uses a different weapon
VI.65 shares the word handless but imagines an oblation itself as a handless shaft capable of disabling enemies. VI.66 places actual archers at the foreground and lets Indra interrupt their shot. The pair was later grouped in a battle rite, and Whitney says the Pāippalāda version of VI.66 is confused with VI.65. That witness relationship is a reason to compare the two, not to merge their meanings. In one received poem the ritual offering is paradoxically armed; in the other the hostile soldiers are caught at the moment of weapon use. Both seek victory, but their imagery locates the decisive action on opposite sides of the field.
WORKED READING
The bowstring as a hinge
Read VI.66.2 slowly. Its fighters run, string, draw, and hurl; the command that they be handless cuts into that sequence. Verse 3 follows with slackened limbs and divided goods, so disarmament becomes conquest. VI.65.2 approaches from the other direction: the speaker’s oblation is the extraordinary handless shaft. Comparing the two verses shows how a single image can mean a divinely active offering in one place and a disabled archer in another. The staged verbs of stringing and drawing make the wish to render fighters handless arrive at the very point their attack becomes possible.