This was one of Kuhn’s most famous discoveries.^67 The similarities in form
and purpose between the Indic and Germanic incantations indicated, in his
opinion, that they were relics of an Indo-European tradition.
We can accept this in principle, not in the sense that the Vedic hymn and
the Germanic and Celtic spells are variants of a single text, but that the
stylistic figure represented by ‘bone to bone, blood to blood’ was traditional
in Indo-European healing incantations. We met this type of multiple poly-
ptoton in Chapter 2, where it was illustrated with examples such as ‘horse
upon horse, army upon army, shield upon shield’, and we saw that it had its
place in a broader canvas of Indo-European poetic-rhetorical style; it is not
something suited only to the healing of bodily organs.
As it happens, there is a Hittite–Luwian ritual text where the same figure is
used in a different sort of therapeutic magic.^68 A ram was sacrificed and
dismembered and the pieces arranged round the body of the human patient
to draw out the sickness from each part into the corresponding part of the
animal: ‘head against head is arranged, throat against throat is arranged, ear
against ear is arranged, shoulder against shoulder is arranged’, and so on
through a series of twelve down to the sole of the foot. The similarity with the
Atharvavedic and European spells is only superficial, because they are not
parts of the patient’s own body that are being brought together. Yet after the
sole of the foot the list continues, ‘bone against bone is arranged, sinew
against sinew is arranged, blood against blood is arranged’. These are no
longer specific parts to go in a specific place. Possibly they have been added as
a formulaic sequence from an incantation of the other type.
One further observation on the Vedic chant. After the healing formulae
and the appeal to the herb, the patient is addressed as a man cured, in full
running order like a chariot after servicing. The final, climactic phrase práti
tis
̇
t
̇hordhváh
̇, ‘standfirm upright’ is not metrical; it is what is said in plain
prose after the incantation is complete: ‘now get up, you’re cured’.^69 But the
words recall Pindar’s verses about Asclepius setting people on their feet with
(^67) A. Kuhn (as n. 60), 58–63= Schmitt (1968), 20–5; cf. de Vries (1956), ii. 169–73;
B. Schlerath in Schmitt (1968), 328–30; Schmitt (1967), 286–9; Durante (1976), 12 f.; Campanile
(1977), 91–3; id. (1990b), 70 f.; K. G. Zysk in Perspectives on Indo-European Language, Culture
and Religion. Studies in Honor of Edgar C. Polomé, ii (JIESM 9; McLean, VA 1992), 321–36;
Watkins (1995), 523 f., 532.
(^68) CTH 760 (1) 1 and 2; Manfred Hutter, Behexung, Entsühnung und Heilung (Freiburg
i. d. Schweiz–Göttingen 1988), 32 f.; G. Beckman, Orientalia 59 (1990), 35 f., 45; cf. Watkins
(1995), 249 f.
(^69) The Paippala ̄da recension (4. 15. 7) has a somewhat different, fully metrical version: rathah
sucakrah ̇
̇
supavir yathaiti | sukhah
̇
suna ̄bhih
̇
, prati tis
̇
t
̇
ha evam, ‘as goes a chariot well-wheeled,
well-tyred, well-hubbed, well-naved, so stand firm’.
338 8. Hymns and Spells