{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/av/av199.htm","path":"hin/av/av199.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/av/av199.htm","text":"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\u00e2hmana, which is unfit to be eaten!\n 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\u00e2hmana, (thinking), 'let me live to-day (if) not to-morrow'!\n 3. Enveloped (is she) in her skin, as an adder with evil poison; do not, O prince, (eat the cow) of the Br\u00e2hmana: sapless, unfit to be eaten, is that cow!\n 4. Away does (the Br\u00e2hmana) take regal power, destroys vigour; like fire which has caught does he burn away everything. He that regards the Br\u00e2hmana as fit food drinks of the poison of the taim\u00e2ta-serpent.\n 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.\n 6. The Br\u00e2hmana must not be encroached upon, any more than fire, by him that regards his own body! For Soma is his (the Br\u00e2hmana's) heir, Indra protects him from hostile plots.\n 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).'\n 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.\n 9. The Br\u00e2hmanas 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.\n 10. They who ruled over a thousand, and were themselves ten hundred, the Vaitahavya, when they devoured the cow of the Br\u00e2hmana, perished.\n 11. The cow herself, when slaughtered, came down upon the Vaitahavyas. who had roasted for themselves the last she-goat of Kesarapr\u00e2bandh\u00e2.\n 12. The one hundred and one persons whom the earth did cast off, because they had injured the offspring of a Br\u00e2hmana, were ruined irretrievably.\n 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\u00e2hmana, whose kin are the gods, does not reach heaven by the road of the Fathers.\n 14. Agni is called our guide, Soma our heir, Indra slays those who curse (us): that the strong (sages) know.\n 15. Like a poisoned arrow, O king, like -an adder, O lord of cattle, is the terrible arrow of the Br\u00e2hmana: with that he smites those who revile (the gods).","title":"Atharva Veda: IX. Prayers and Imprecations in the Interest of the Brahmans: V, 18. Imprecation against the oppressors of Brahmans","type":"page"}