Atharva Veda · 21 of 724

HYMN XXI

A prayer to Indra for protection 1. Lord of the clans, giver of bliss, fiend-slayer, mighty o'er the foe, May Indra, Soma-drinker, go before us, Bull, who brings us peace. 2. Indra, subdue our enemies, lay low the men who fight with us: Down into nether darkness send the man who shows us enmity: 3. Strike down the fiend, strike down the foes, break thou asunder Vritra's jaws. O Indra, Vritra-slayer, quell the wrath of the assailing foe. 4. Turn thou the foeman's thought away, his dart who fain would conquer us: Grant us thy great protection; keep his deadly weapon far away.

Insight

The most famous Atharvan charm of all, and one of the canonical Frazerian illustrations of sympathetic magic: jaundice is yellow, the sun is yellow, the yellow birds (parrots, mynas) are yellow, so the priest transfers the yellow disease into the yellow birds and into the yellow cattle and the patient is restored to his own color. The treatment is performed by physically sprinkling the patient with water mixed with the dust of a red ox while reciting the verses, per Kaushika-Sutra 26.14-17. James Frazer cited this hymn directly in The Golden Bough as a textbook case of homeopathic magic — the principle that like cures like by visible association. His taxonomy is dated now; the hymn is not. Yellow-into-yellow transference is one of the oldest documented therapeutic procedures in any language.Kaushika-Sutra 26; Frazer The Golden Bough 1.54 (homeopathic magic).