1 God hath not bestowed this cow on thee to eat thereof.

Seek not, O prince, to devour the cow of the devout scholar, which is not thine.

2 A base prince, spoiled at dice, and ruined by himself, may devour the scholar's cow, and think, To-day, and not to-morrow, let me live!

3 The scholar's cow is like a snake, charged with dire poison, clothed with skin.

O prince, bitter to the taste is she, and none may eat of her.

4 She 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 devout scholar as mere food to feed him.

5 Whoever smites him, deeming him a weakling—blasphemer, coveting his wealth through folly—

God sets a fire alight within his bosom. He who acts thus is loathed by earth and heaven.

6 No devout scholar must be injured, safe as fire from him who loves himself.

For God guards him from the curse.

7 The fool who eats the scholars' food and thinks it pleasant to the taste,

Eats, but can ne'er digest, the cow that bristles with a hundred barbs.

8 His voice an arrow's neck, his tongue a bowstring, his windpipes fire-enveloped heads of arrows,

With these the devout pierces through blasphemers, with God-sped bows that quell the hearts within them.

9 Keen arrows have the devout, 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.

10 They who, themselves ten hundred, were the rulers of a thousand men,

The Vaitahavyas, were destroyed for that they ate a scholar's cow.

11 The cow, indeed, when she was slain o'erthrew those Vaitahavyas, who

Cooked the last she-goat that remained of Kesaraprabandha's flock.

12 One and a hundred were the folk, those whom the Earth shook off from her:

When they had wronged the righteous they perished inconceivably.

13 Among mankind the despiser of God moveth: he hath drunk poison, naught but bone is left him.

Who wrongs the kinsman of the righteous, the devout, gains not the sphere to which the righteous of old travelled.

14 God, in sooth, is called our guide, the Giver of provision is called our next of kin.

The Mighty quells him who curses us. Sages know well that this is so.

15 Prince! like a poisoned arrow, like a deadly snake, O lord of kine!

Dire is the devout one's arrow: he pierces his enemies therewith.