{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/rigveda/rv10117.htm","path":"hin/rigveda/rv10117.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv10117.htm","text":"Rig Veda, tr. by Ralph T.H. Griffith, [1896]\n1. THE Gods have not ordained hunger to be our death: even to the well-fed man comes death in varied shape.\n The riches of the liberal never waste away, while he who will not give finds none to comfort him.\n 2 The man with food in store who, when the needy comes in miserable case begging for bread to eat,\n Hardens his heart against him-even when of old he did him service-finds not one to comfort him.\n 3 Bounteous is he who gives unto the beggar who comes to him in want of food and feeble.\n Success attends him in the shout of battle. He makes a friend of him in future troubles.\n 4 No friend is he who to his friend and comrade who comes imploring food, will offer nothing.\n Let him depart-no home is that to rest in-, and rather seek a stranger to support him.\n 5 Let the rich satisfy the poor implorer, and bend his eye upon a longer pathway.\n Riches come now to one, now to another, and like the wheels of cars are ever rolling.\n 6 The foolish man wins food with fruitless labour: that food -I speak the truth- shall be his ruin.\n He feeds no trusty friend, no man to love him. All guilt is he who eats with no partaker.\n 7 The ploughshare ploughing makes the food that feeds us, and with its feet cuts through the path it follows.\n Better the speaking than the silent Brahman: the liberal friend outyalues him who gives not.\n 8 He with one foot hath far outrun the biped, and the two-footed catches the three-footed.\n Four-footed creatures come when bipeds call them, and stand and look where five are met together.\n 9 The hands are both alike: their labour differs. The yield of sister milch-kine is unequal.\n Twins even diffier in their strength and vigour: two, even kinsmen, differ in their bounty.","title":"Rig Veda: Rig-Veda, Book 10: HYMN CXVII. Liberality.","type":"page"}