| Summary: | The paper discusses two compositions about agriculture from Paippalāda-Saṁhitā (PS) 11. Found neither in AVŚ nor anywhere else, and they have not received much notice, although they provide some interesting additions to our knowledge of popular religious practices of the Vedic period. PS 11.10-11 is about threshing and winnowing, but its focus is the indrarāśi-mahodara, “the big-bellied heap of Indra,” a special pile of grain that may be consumed by brahmans, but becomes poison for non-brahmans. Renou surmised from fragmentary allusions in the RV and AVŚ that there was an early Vedic tradition where Indra was a god of agriculture, and his hypothesis can now be further supported: the function of Indra’s heap appears to have been to remove contamination caused by the forces of evil from the threshing floor. It is an unusual hymn whose text presents many difficulties of reading and interpretation, including a reference to Śunahśepa, and some of these problems will be discussed briefly. PS 11.14-15 consists of more conventional requests to Śunāśirā and other deities to make the crops prosper. However, a particularly interesting feature is two stanzas...
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