The origin is a way of changing the origin in a data file. The line starts in column 1, and is followed by a domain origin. This seems like it could be useful for putting more then one zone into a data file, but that's not how it works. The name server fundamentally requires a given zone to map entirely to some specific file. You should therefore be very careful to use $ORIGIN only once at the top of a file, or, within a file, to change to a ``lower'' domain in the zone -- never to some other zone altogether.