NyañcanĪ- “refuge” ATH.S. V.5.2 d

BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS NYAIqCANi- "REFUGE" ATH.S. V.5.2 d The second stanza of the hymn to the plant Ailde~-1 reads: yds tva pibati j~vati trdyase p~rus,ath tvdm/ bhartr[ hi ~d~vat&n asi jdndndrh ca nyd~can~ The meaning "lap" assigned to ny6hcanf- by Roth (and Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 69, Grill, Hundert Lieder des AV., p. 11, MonierWilliams) is obviously an etymological guess (cf. ahka-, m., since BAU.). Against it Bloomfield, SBE, vol. 42, p. 420, pointed to nyd~cana-, n. "refuge" in RS. VIII. 27.18a, Ath. S. IV. 36.6d (like Grill, op. c., p. 142!) and translated "(thou art) the refuge of men" (p. 20). Whitney followed him by rendering "hiding-place(?)" Since every pada of this stanza stresses the salutary effect of dildc ~-, Thieme's proposal to read *nydgjanf"paint" (see Kuhn's Zeitschr., vol. 69, 1951, p. 209, n. 1) has little chance of being correct. Especially the nomina instrumenti in -ana-, when used as epithets to other nouns, very often adopt the grammatical gender of these. Cf. e.g. pgdnir upasdcanf RS. X. 105A0a contrasting with upasdcana-, n. RS. X. 76.7c (see Thieme, Untersuchungen zur Wortkunde und Auslegung des RV., p. 33f.). Since the accent of nydhcani- suggests a relation nydhcanf- : nydfzcana- similar to that of upasdcani- : upasdcana-, the word nydhcani- ,,refuge" may be supposed to stress again the idea already expressed by trdyase in b (Kuiper, Vdk 2, p. 42). In this connection it is interesting to note that for agnaft v~ etdn nydhcanam ichate MS. I. 8.2 (: p. 116, 14) the corresponding Kftt.haka-versionhas agnd evd tdt trdn.am icchate, KS. VI. 2 (: p. 50, 19); of. KapKS. 4.1 (:p. 37, 11). F. B. J. Kuiper 1 See K. N. Dave, Lae and the Lae-Insect in the Av. (Nagpur, 1950).  (...truncated)