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10. The Skambha

Atharvaveda (अथर्ववेद)

The Skambha (स्कम्भ) hymns are Śaunaka (शौनक) 10.7 and 10.8. Skambha means a prop, a pillar, that on which something rests so that it does not fall. The Paippalāda recension has these thoughts under a different numbering. No verse of the hymn is sat here. The Sanskrit is not invented to fill the gap.

The hymn asks. In whom are the worlds set? In whom are the gods, the breaths, the waters, the knowledge of the knowers, the names, the Vedas themselves? Who is the pillar of all of that? The questions come in a long run, and they are not a riddle with a small answer. Each question takes something a person thinks is fundamental and asks what that thing, in turn, stands on.

The turn of the hymn is that the support is not one more object among objects. A post you could raise in a hall would itself need a ground. The pillar the hymn is seeking is that in which the parts of the world inhere, including the gods and including the knowledge by which the gods are known. Later upaniṣads will say Brahman (ब्रह्मन्) and ātman (आत्मन्). This hymn says pillar, and it says the knower who knows the pillar knows the Veda's own ground.

That is why the Atharvaveda is not only a book of the house. Beside the herbs and the assembly it keeps a speculative voice already asking the upaniṣadic question. The Praśna will ask six questions that climb toward the person. The Muṇḍaka will divide a lower knowledge from a higher. The Māṇḍūkya will count the states of the one who knows. The pillar is their Atharvan preface: the world rests on what is not a thing in the world.

नेपालीमा

स्कम्भ शौनक १०.७ र १०.८ हो। पैप्पलादको अङ्क अर्कै हो। स्कम्भ भनेको खम्बा हो, जसमा अरू अडिन्छ। यो पृष्ठमा त्यस भजनको कुनै ऋचा बसालिएको छैन।

प्रश्न यस्तो छ। लोक, देवता, प्राण र ज्ञान केमा अडिएका छन्? त्यो खम्बा हलमा गाडिने खाँबो होइन। खाँबोलाई पनि आफू टेक्ने ठाउँ चाहिन्छ। उपनिषद्को ब्रह्मन् र आत्मन्को प्रश्न यो भजनले खम्बाको नाममा पहिले नै सोधेको छ।

Where it sits

The twelve Upaniṣads open with the Īśā. The map of both books is the Śruti portal. The verse shelf of three upaniṣads is already sat.