Mesopotamian omens in India (6)

Text
The earliest attempts to list and classify omens and provide their ritual countermeasures (śānti) in India are found in two Sanskrit omen texts:
1) kaṇḍikās 93-136 of the Kauśikasūtra of the Atharvaveda;
(2) the common source, now lost, of the Adbhutabrāhmaṇa, which is adhyāyā 6 or 5 of the Ṣaḍviṃśabrāhmaṇa, the Āśvalāyanagṛhyapariśiṣṭa (4.11-22), and the Ādbhutaśānti of the Atharvaveda Pariśiṣṭa.

The omens in this latter source were associated with the seven deities Indra, Varuṇa, Yama, Agni, Vaiśravaṇa, Viṣṇu, and Vāyu, and involve phenomena occurring on the earth, in the atmosphere, and in heavens. The omens sent by Vāyu, the god of the wind, include the shapes of animals seen in the clouds, rains of dust or blood, and places in the air. Those omens sent by Soma include the falling of meteors, the glowing of the quarters, and comets, and those sent by Viṣṇu include halos about the Sun and Moon. All of those omens are familiar from protases of the Mesopotamian celestial and terrestrial omens. In these sources the emphasis is upon the pacification (śānti) rituals by which the anger of the god who sent omen is appeased, which is clearly a parallel to the Babylonian omens with their Namburbi rituals, though no exact parallels exist since the Indian omens are without apodoses. It is possible that the original of these Sanskrit texts was at least in part dependent on a Mesopotamian prototype that reached India slightly before or after the Achaemenid occupation of Gandhara in the sixth century BCE. Much clearer is the transmission of Mesopotamian omen texts - both protases and apodoses - to India in the fifth and early fourth century BCE, for the contemporary Sanskrit and Prakrit literature is replete with references to and examples of such omens. It is clear that in this period much of the Mesopotamian omen literature, perhaps from Aramaic versions, was translated into an Indian language, and that these translations, though undoubtedly considerably altered to fit with Indian intellectual traditions and with the Indian society which the diviners had to serve, form the basis of the rich Indian literature on terrestrial and celestial omens.

Sources (list of abbreviations)
Āśvalāyanagṛhya, Pariśiṣṭa 4.11-22
Atharvaveda 2, Kauśikasūtra 93-136
Atharvaveda, Pariśiṣṭa, Ādbhutaśānti
Ṣaḍviṃśabrāhmaṇa 6 (5?)

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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