the cows had to walk knee-deep. They cause this long and broad unceasing
rain to fall on their ways. O Maruts, with such strength as yours, you
have caused men to tremble, you have caused the mountains to tremble. As
the Maruts pass along, they talk together on the way: does anyone hear
them? Come fast on your quick steeds! there are worshippers for you
among the Kanvas: may you well rejoice among them. Truly there is enough
for your rejoicing. We always are their servants, that we may live even
the whole of life.

V

To every sacrifice you hasten together, you accept prayer after prayer,
O quick Maruts! Let me therefore bring you hither by my prayers from
heaven and earth, for our welfare, and for our great protection; the
shakers who were born to bring food and light, self-born and
self-supported, like springs, like thousandfold waves of water, aye,
visibly like unto excellent bulls, those Maruts, like Soma-drops, which
squeezed from ripe stems dwell, when drunk, in the hearts of the
worshipper--see how on their shoulders there clings as if a clinging
wife; in their hands the quoit is held and the sword. Lightly they have
come down from heaven of their own accord: Immortals, stir yourselves
with the whip! The mighty Maruts on dustless paths, armed with brilliant
spears, have shaken down even the strong places. O ye Maruts, who are
armed with lightning-spears, who stirs you from within by himself, as
the jaws are stirred by the tongue? You shake the sky, as if on the
search for food; you are invoked by many, like the solar horse of the
day. Where, O Maruts, is the top, where the bottom of the mighty sky
where you came? When you throw down with the thunderbolt what is strong,
like brittle things, you fly across the terrible sea! As your conquest
is violent, splendid, terrible, full and crushing, so, O Maruts, is your
gift delightful, like the largess of a liberal worshipper,
wide-spreading, laughing like heavenly lightning. From the tires of
their chariot-wheels streams gush forth, when they send out the voice of
the clouds; the lightnings smiled upon the earth, when the Maruts shower
down fatness. Prisni brought forth for the great fight the terrible
train of the untiring Maruts: when fed they produced the dark cloud, and
then looked about for invigorating food. May this praise, O Maruts, this
song of Mandarya, the son of Mana, the poet, ask you with food for
offspring for ourselves! May we have an invigorating autu