Atharva Veda · 272 of 724

HYMN CIV

The same 1. We bind our foemen with a bond that binds them close and holds them fast. Their breath and respiration I dissever, and their lives from life. 2. This bond, made keen by Indra, I have formed with heat of holy zeal. Securely bind our enemies, O Agni, who are standing here. 3. Indra and Agni bind them fast, Soma the King, and both the Friends! May Indra, girt by Maruts, make a bond to bind our enemies.

Context

A charm to cure cough. Watch how the rite works: the cough is told to fly away like an arrow, like the rays of the sun, like the speed of thought. This is the classic Atharvan structure of comparison-as-banishment — the priest names a thing that moves swiftly, identifies the cough with it, and commands the identification to take effect. James Frazer called this homeopathic magic, but the cognitive structure is more interesting than the label: the priest is using metaphor as a ritual operator, asking the world to take the comparison as a binding instruction. Comparable formulas appear in Greek (the spell-corpora gathered as PGM) and in the Old English Lacnunga. The Atharvan example here is one of the cleanest specimens.Frazer Golden Bough; PGM (Greek Magical Papyri); Lacnunga (Anglo-Saxon).