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 VII IN FOCUS
Against cursers
Whoever shall curse us not cursing, and whoever shall curse us cursing, like a tree smitten by a thunderbolt, let him dry up from the root.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read VII.59 (61) at Wikisource ↗
ATHARVAVEDA · BOOK VI ALSO CITED
Against curses
Read comparison hymn VI.37 (3 verses)
Hither hath come forth, having harnessed his chariot, the thousand-eyed curse, seeking after my curser, as a wolf the house of a sheepowner.
Avoid us, O curse, as a burning fire a pond; smite our curser here, as the bolt from heaven a tree.
Whoever shall curse us not cursing, and whoever shall curse us cursing, him, withered (?), I cast forth for death, as a bone (?) for a dog.
Whitney–Lanman translation as printed (1905) · Read VI.37 at Wikisource ↗
An opponent who acts through words
The antagonist is identified by cursing rather than by a visible weapon or an army. Hostile speech itself is the danger the poem names. The response is also spoken: an imprecation seeks to cancel or overwhelm another imprecation. That is why the verse belongs to a wider Atharvan concern with words as contested power. It says nothing about the opponent's actual utterance, however, and it does not give a scene in which we can judge the dispute. The curser is known only through the speakers' accusation. The first-person plural voice makes this a collective stand, even though the rival remains a shadowy individual.
The speakers leave their own behavior open
The phrase 'whether we curse or not' is remarkably candid. It does not insist that the speakers have stayed silent or morally clean. Instead it covers both possibilities and requests the same result regardless. That syntax blocks a simple self-defense story. It grants the speakers a favored outcome even if they joined the hostile exchange. The poem does not debate whether this is fair. Its power as evidence lies partly in exposing a partisan perspective: the other person's curse is treated as a threat, while the speakers' potential curse does not disqualify their petition. Any modern summary that deletes this clause loses the verse's central complication.
The tree image seeks a lasting failure
The curser should dry up like a tree struck by lightning, and the damage reaches from the root. A broken branch could regrow; a ruined root threatens the whole organism. The comparison therefore makes the desired end more final than temporary silence. Lightning supplies an overwhelming force without describing a human implement. The suddenness of the strike contrasts with the slow condition of withering. This is an imaginative sequence, not a witness report about a tree or a person. The poetic image states how complete the speakers want the rival's defeat to be, not that any such defeat occurred.
The same start can lead elsewhere
Whitney notes that the first half also appears at VI.37.3, while the second half there is different. Pāippalāda places the VII.59 material with VI.37, so the boundary between short hymns is not uniform across witnesses. This matters for reading the Śaunaka verse: the root-and-lightning image is one particular continuation of a circulating opening. The shared line does not make the two poems identical. A present-day spell borrowing the tree image would be a fresh invention, rather than a recovered ancient procedure. What survives in the sources is a family of verbal forms and competing endings, not proof that any curser was harmed.
WORKED READING
One opening, different endings
Read VII.59 against VI.37.3. The shared opening names a curser and allows that the speakers themselves may or may not have cursed. VII.59 then selects the lightning-struck tree, dried from its root, as the fate of that curser. VI.37 carries its counter-curse in another direction. The decisive difference is in the image after the repeated clause. Recognizing that shift shows how a short, reusable formula acquired a sharper particular shape in VII.59. The struck tree's damaged root makes the desired withering durable; this is harsher than a momentary silencing of another person's speech.