And I Will Fix You: A ‘Chariot-simile’ in PS 4.15.6–7, ŚS 4.12.6–7

In this paper, I focus on the chariot-simile of PS 4.15.6–7 (= ŚS 4.12.6–7): in this passage, the healer is compared to a craftsman (R̥bhu), his patient to a broken wagon. To reconstruct the disiecta membra of the metaphor, I focus on the phraseology applying to the R̥bhus in the Rigveda. The verb takṣ ‘to fashion’ occasionally describes ‘rejuvenations’ effected by these gods and the Aśvins, healer deities of the Vedic pantheon. Moreover, I show that the metaphorical conceptions of the human body in terms of a chariot is widely attested in other Indo-European languages, where names of chariot parts are identical to those of the parts of the human body. I finally propose that the chariot-metaphor underlies the poetic expression τέκτων νωδυνίας ‘fashioner of painlessness’, a kenning referred to the healer Asclepius in Pindar’s Pythian Three.