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KANDA IV
THE PILING OF THE FIRE ALTAR
PRAPATHAKA V
The Offerings To Rudra
1. The Appeasing Of Rudra
iv. 5. 1.
Homage to thy wrath, O Rudra,
To thine arrow homage also;
Homage to thy bow,
And homage to thine arms. With thy most kindly arrow,
And kindly bow,
With thy kindly missile,
Be gentle to us, O Rudra. That body of thine, O Rudra, which is kindly,
Not dread, with auspicious look,
With that body, most potent to heal,
O haunter of the mountains, do thou look on us. The arrow which, O haunter of mountains,
In thy hand [1] thou bearest to shoot,
That make thou kindly, O guardian of mountains;
Harm not the world of men. With kindly utterance thee
We address, O liver on the mountains,
That all our folk
Be free from sickness and of good cheer. The advocate hath spoken in advocacy,
The first divine leech,
Confounding all the serpents
And all sorceries. The dusky, the ruddy,
The brown, the auspicious,
And the Rudras which in thousands
Lie around this (earth) in the quarters [2],
Their wrath do we deprecate. He who creepeth away,
Blue-necked and ruddy,
Him the cowherds have seen,
Have seen the bearers of water
And him all creatures;
May be, seen, be gentle unto us. Homage to the blue-necked,
Thousand-eyed one, the bountiful
And to those that are his warriors
I have paid my homage. Unfasten from the two notches
Of thy bow the bowstring,
And cast thou down
The arrows in thy hand [3]. Unstringing thy bow,
Do thou of a thousand eyes and a hundred quivers,
Destroying the points of thine arrows,
Be gentle and kindly to us. Unstrung is the bow of him of the braided hair
And arrowless his quiver;
His arrows have departed,
Empty is his quiver. O most bountiful one, the missile
That is in thy hand, thy bow,
With it on all sides do thou guard us,
Free from sickness. Homage to thy weapon,
Unstrung, dread;
And homage to thy two hands,
To thy bow. May the missile from thy bow
Avoid us on every side,
And do thou lay far from us
This quiver that is thine.
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