1 We know the source of the shaft, the rain-cloud, liberal nourisher by God's command; know well its mother, Earth, with her manifold designs.

2 Do thou, O Bowstring, bend thyself around us: make my body stone. Firm in thy strength drive far away malignities and hateful things.

3 When, closely clinging round the wood, the bowstring sings triumph to the swift and whizzing arrow, O God the Mighty, ward off from us the shaft, the missile.

4 As in its flight the arrow's point hangs between earth and firmament, so stand this Munja grass between ailment and dysenteric ill!