![]() This paper deals with a complex problem of interpretation regarding an event referred to in various brief statements dispersed in the Rg-Veda (RV): Atri’s rescue by the twin gods, the Aśvins. The problems in Jamison's interpretation of hymns such as RV 8.73 and in the translation of hiména in RV 8.73.3 as "with snow" rather than "during the winter" remain therefore unresolved. In the recent translation published by Jamison and Brereton, Jamison mentions the present study but does not adress any of the arguments (The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. ![]() “Structures, Events and Ritual Practice in the Rg-Veda : The Gharma and Atri’s Rescue by the Aśvins.” In: Language, Ritual and Poetics in Ancient India and Iran: Studies in honor of Shaul Migron (ed. In the late Vedic period, against the background of a wider social and political re-casting, both the use and the image of this vehicle undergo a process of specialization: the chariot plays a role within the great royal rituals, already as an attribute of power, as it will remain in medieval times. More precisely, this vehicle functioned as a sacred space “in motion.” In the Ṛgvedic period, the chariot, representing an allegory of movement, figures in various poetic semantic fields. Throughout Vedic times, the “chariot was not merely a practical instrument for conveying persons, but an object vested with religious significance and symbolic values” (Sparreboom 1985: 1). This provides the background for an analysis of the ways in which the motif was reused in later times, as for example, in South Asian medieval contexts. Moreover, it aims at supplying a picture of the semantic fields that words for “chariot” and its parts have been associated with. This chapter points at the different meanings that the motif of the chariot assumed in different historical strata of the Vedic corpus.
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