Resumen de Mito y ritual en la leyenda de Pururavas y Urvasi (RV 10.95): [Trabajos preparatorios para la traducción del Ogveda, 6]
Francisco Javier Rubio Orecilla
The well known dialogue between the king Pururavas and the "apsaras" Urvasi (RV 10.95) is here translated and commented. Different versions of the frame history are too translated (Sayana's commentary, 6; KS 8.10, 11 -to which a textual emendation is proposed-; MS 1.6.12, 11; SBr. 11.5.1, 15; BaudhSS 18-44-45, 17), and put together in order to elucidate the relative antiquity of several episodes. The inclusion of this texts in the RV-Samhita is due to the simbolic identification of Pururavas and Urvasi with the "aranis", the wood pieces used in the kindle ritually fire; their son is however not the sacrificial fire, but Ayu, the "long life" that the vedic people was allways pleading for, and which can only be obtained through the sacrificial fire that Pururavas reached owing his marital relation with the inmortal Urvasi. All this belongs to the material that Rig- and Yajur-vedic poets knew; from the older prosa versions it seems clear too that the words of Pururavas in climax situations "púnar aimi... éd (-"Here I am back" ... alas!) could have been present in the original prosa redaction of the legend (11). Much of the material in the postrigvedic versions was taken from SBr., and the SBr. version could be read in turn as a paraphrase or explanation of many points of the rigvedic verses -but from a vesion slightly divergent of Sakalya's one-; so, the "apsaras" as water-birds (atí-), or the lambs (úrana-), are probably scholiast reinterpretations of mere comparations of the rigvedic text (atáyo ná 10.95.9 "like water-birds", úra ná 10.95.3 "like sheeps"). The most problematic point is the interpretation of RV 10.95.3cd, an elusive verse which refers obviously to the nucleus of the legend: what condition(s) required Urvasi to consent her union with a mortal, and how this / these condition(s) were broken. Here, the nakedness of Pururavas, revealed through a stratagem of the gods, seems to be only original cause of the disparation of Urvasi. The sense of the difficult words "avire kratau" is too discused in 18/19: probably, in Pururavas mouth it is to be understood as "with the purpose to deprive you of a husband" (alternatively: "with the purpose to deprive me of sons"). This can be understood as a rhetoric device of the king, that uses "pro bono suo" what originaly was a contemptuous exclamation of Urvasi ("have I no man here?", as in SBr., or, better, due to accent, "no-man, no-hero (are you)!"); in any case, "avira-" (SBr.) belongs too to the primitive oral version of the legend.
