Book 5: Hymn 18: The wickedness of oppressing and robbing Brāhmans

1The Gods, O Prince, have not bestowed this cow on thee to eat thereof. Seek not, Rājanya, to devour the Brāhman's cow which none may eat. 2A base Rājanya, spoiled at dice, and ruined by himself, may eat. The Brāhman's cow and think, To-day and not tomorrow, let me live! 3The Brāhman's cow is like a snake, charged with due poison, clothed with skin. Rājanya! bitter to the taste is she, and none may eat of her. 4She takes away his strength, she mars his splendour, she ruins everything like fire enkindled. That man drinks poison of the deadly serpent who counts the Brāhman as mere food to feed him. 5Whoever smites him, deeming him a weakling-blasphemer, coveting his wealth through folly Indra sets fire alight within his bosom. He who acts thus is loathed by Earth and Heaven. 6No Brāhman must be injured, safe as fire from him who loves himself. For Soma is akin to him and Indra guards him from the curse. 7The fool who eats the Brāhmans' food and thinks it pleasant to the taste, Eats, but can ne'er digest, the cow that bristles with a hundred barbs, 8His voice an arrow's neck, his tongue a bowstring, his windpipes fire-enveloped heads of arrows, p. a177 With these the Brāhman pierces through blasphemers, with God-sped bows that quell the hearts within them.

9Keen arrows have the Brāhmans, armed with missiles: the shaft, when they discharge it, never faileth. Pursuing him with fiery zeal and anger, they pierce the foeman even from a distance. 10They who, themselves ten hundred, were the rulers of a thousand men, The Vaitahavyas, were destroyed for that they ate a Brāhman's cow. 11The cow, indeed, when she was slain o'erthrew those Vaitahavyas, who Cooked the last she-goat that remained of Kesaraprābandhā's flock. 12One and a hundred were the folk, those whom the earth shook off from her: When they had wronged the Brāhman race they perished incon- ceivably. 13Among mankind the Gods' despiser moveth: he hath drunk poison, naught but bone is left him. Who wrongs the kinsman of the Gods, the Brāhman, gains not the sphere to which the Fathers travelled. 14Agni, in sooth, is called our guide, Soma is called our next of kin. Indra quells him who curses us. Sages know well that this is so. 15Prince! like a poisoned arrow, like a deadly snake, O lord of kine! Dire is the Brāhman's arrow: he pierces his enemies therewith.