A Prayer to Death from Rigveda--Contd

Those of you that wish to embrace a progressive old age
Gradually, taking care to maintain your rightful place in the line
May Tvashta, the God of a comfortable life, be pleased with you
And reward you with a long life.

These good women with living spouses
May they enter now with eyes lined with butter
That shed no tears , bear no illness and are lit with beauty
Let them first take the place that is theirs since birth.

Wake up O widow, and walk towards the land of the living
You, who have lain next to a lifeless body
Of one who had held you by hand, impregnated you
And made you into a wife and an owner of lands.

Get hold of your dead spouse's bow
For your own brave leadership and effulgence
May you O Dead one, and we with our leaders
Be victorious over all our enemies.

O dead one, enter the Mother earth
So kind and limitless in her expanse
May she that is ever young and soft and gentle as a ball of wool
Protect you from chaos.

O earth, raise him, do not let him be stifled
Give him an easy passage like a winnowing tray
As a mother covers her son with her scarf
So cover him O Earth.

The earth being replaced may award him a proper place
A thousand pillars may support him there
The pillars that shall drip water light and ghee over him
And support him all along .

I now raise the earth all around you
I must not cause any hurt to the interred one
May the ancestors hold up the thousand pillars
May the god of Death create you a habitat.

Days that have yet to come
Have placed me here as feathers to some yet- to- be made arrow
I now block the flight of my yet-to-arrive words
Horse-like, by holding tight the reins.


(Concluded)