Devalok
Legend · 3 tellings · Northeast India, Pan-India

The frogs who sing when the rain comes

Who is in it

Texts: Rigveda

The story, beat by beat

  1. The frogs have lain silent for a year like priests keeping a vow.
  2. They lie in the dry pond bed like a dry skin until the rain of heaven falls on them.
  3. Their voices rise together like cows lowing with their calves.
  4. One frog greets another with cries of joy, as a son greets his father.
  5. One repeats the other's call as a pupil repeats his teacher's lesson.
  6. One bellows like a cow, one bleats like a goat; one is green, one spotted; all share one name.
  7. They sit round the full pool like priests round the vessel at the overnight Soma rite.
  8. Like priests ending a year-long rite, and like heated kettles, they come out and none hide.
  9. They keep the order of the twelve months and never miss the season.
  10. The poet asks the frogs for cows by the hundred and long life.

frogs rain priests monsoon folk rite

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Rigveda 7.103

Pan-India All traditions

Ten verses. The frogs, silent for a year like vow-keeping Brahmans, lift the voice Parjanya has inspired when the floods of heaven fall on them in the dry pool bed. They greet each other like son and father, repeat each other like pupil and teacher, differ in voice (cow-bellow, goat-bleat) and colour (green, spotted) but share one name. They gather round the pool like Brahmans round the full vessel at the Atiratra rite on the first day of the rains, and like sweating Adhvaryus come out with none hidden. The poet asks them for cows in hundreds and long life.

Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 7.103

Encyclopedia

Bhekuli Biya, Assam

Northeast India · Assam Folk 🪔 Bhekuli Biya

When the monsoon is late, Assamese villages hold a wedding for two frogs. An Assamese verse has farmers ask the clouds why there is no rain; the clouds answer that there is none until the frogs croak. A male and a female frog are caught, washed, dressed as groom and bride, seated on a platform and joined with a red thread; a priest or elder performs the rites and prays to the rain god; vermilion is put on the bride. They are released in a pond; if they stay together rain is expected.

What is different here:

A living folk rite, not a hymn. The frogs must be made happy before rain will come; the god named is Varuna, not Parjanya. Similar rites are reported as Mandooka Parinaya and Banger Biye elsewhere.

Wikipedia: Bhekuli Biya

Primary text (translation)

Atharvaveda 4.15.12-15

Pan-India All traditions

The rain charm repeats the first verse of the frog hymn and adds direct orders: let the speckled-armed frogs send out their voices along the brooks; let the female frog speak a welcome, greet the rain and swim in the middle of the lake with four feet spread.

What is different here:

The frogs are told to call so that rain will fall; in the Rigveda the rain comes first and they answer.

Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1895) § 4.15

Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; Wikipedia: Bhekuli Biya; Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1895)

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