Book 1: Hymn 2: A charm against dysentery

1We know the father of the shaft, Parjanya, liberal nourisher, Know well his mother: Prithivī, Earth with her manifold designs. 2Do thou, O Bowstring, bend thyself around us: make my body stone. Firm in thy strength drive far away malignities and hateful things. 3When, closely clinging round the wood, the bowstring sings triumph to the swift and whizzing arrow, Indra, ward off from us the shaft, the missile. 4As in its flight the arrow's point hangs between earth and firmament, So stand this Munja grass between ailment and dysenteric ill!