HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
IX.
PRAYERS AND IMPRECATIONS IN THE INTEREST OF THE BRAHMANS.
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V, 18. Imprecation Against The Oppressors Of Brahmans.
1. The gods, O king, did not give to thee this (Cow) to eat. Do not, O prince, seek to devour the cow of the Br�hmana, which is unfit to be eaten!
2. The prince, beguiled by dice, the wretched one who has lost as a stake his own person, he may, perchance, eat the cow of the Br�hmana, (thinking), 'let me live to-day (if) not to-morrow'!
3. Enveloped (is she) in her skin, as an adder with evil poison; do not, O prince, (eat the cow) of the Br�hmana: sapless, unfit to be eaten, is that cow!
4. Away does (the Br�hmana) take regal power, destroys vigour; like fire which has caught does he burn away everything. He that regards the Br�hmana as fit food drinks of the poison of the taim�ta-serpent.
5. He who thinks him (the Brahman) mild, and slays him, he who reviles the gods, lusts after wealth, without thought, in his heart Indra kindles a fire; him both heaven and earth hate while he lives.
6. The Br�hmana must not be encroached upon, any more than fire, by him that regards his own body! For Soma is his (the Br�hmana's) heir, Indra protects him from hostile plots.
7. He swallows her (the cow), bristling with a hundred hooks, (but) is unable to digest her, he, the fool who, devouring the food of the Brahmans, thinks, 'I am eating a luscious (morsel).'
8. (The Brahman's) tongue turns into a bow. string, his voice into the neck of an arrow; his windpipe, his teeth are bedaubed with holy fire: with these the Brahman strikes those who revile the gods, by means of bows that have the strength to reach the heart, discharged by the gods.
9. The Br�hmanas have sharp arrows, are armed with missiles, the arrow whi ch they hurl goes not in vain; pursuing him with their holy fire and their wrath, even from afar, do they pierce him.
10. They who ruled over a thousand, and were themselves ten hundred, the Vaitahavya, when they devoured the cow of the Br�hmana, perished.
11. The cow herself, when slaughtered, came down upon the Vaitahavyas. who had roasted for themselves the last she-goat of Kesarapr�bandh�.
12. The one hundred and one persons whom the earth did cast off, because they had injured the offspring of a Br�hmana, were ruined irretrievably.
13. As a reviler of the gods does he live among mortals, having swallowed poison, he becomes more bone (than flesh). He that injureth a Br�hmana, whose kin are the gods, does not reach heaven by the road of the Fathers.
14. Agni is called our guide, Soma our heir, Indra slays those who curse (us): that the strong (sages) know.
15. Like a poisoned arrow, O king, like -an adder, O lord of cattle, is the terrible arrow of the Br�hmana: with that he smites those who revile (the gods).
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