The Song of the Earth

There is no story in this hymn. Nobody is cursed and nobody is rescued. A man walks across the land he lives on, and he talks to it. That is all that happens, and it takes sixty-three verses.

He began with what holds her up.

"Truth holds up the Earth," he said. "Truth, and the great law, and the heat of effort, and prayer, and sacrifice. May she, the queen of all that has been and all that will be, make wide room for us."

Then he looked around him and started to count what she carried.

There were heights and slopes and level plains. There was the sea, and the rivers, and the waters that ran over her day and night without stopping. There were the fields where food grew, rice and barley. There were cattle and horses and birds. There were the forest trees, standing where they had always stood.

"Your hills are good, Prithivi," he said. "Your snowy mountains and your woodlands are good. Brown earth, black earth, red earth, earth of every colour. I have set my foot on you, and I have not been struck down or wounded or beaten."

He stood still for a moment, and then he said the line that people remember from this hymn.

"The Earth is my mother. I am the Earth's son. Parjanya, the rain, is my father. May he help me too."

He walked on, and he noticed her scent.

It rose from the ground and the plants and the water. It was in the lotus. It was in men and women, in horses and warriors, in the deer and the elephants, and in the brightness of young girls.

"Make me sweet with that scent of yours," he asked. "Let nobody hate me."

He saw that fire was in her as well. It lay in the stones and in the plants and under the waters, and it burned in people and in cattle.

He thought of everyone who lived on her. Men sang and danced on her, and shouted. Men also fought on her, and the war drum sounded. She carried people who spoke many different languages and kept many different customs, each according to the place they lived in.

"Give me a thousand streams of wealth, like a steady cow that never fails," he said.

And he noticed how patient she was. She carried the fool and the weighty man alike. She bore the death of the good and of the wicked. She let the wild boar root in her. Her roads were open to carts and to walkers, and honest people and thieves used the same ones.

He knew that he lived by cutting into her, as everyone who farms does. So he made her a promise.

"Whatever I dig out of you, Earth, let it grow back quickly. Let me not pierce your vitals or your heart."

He asked for small mercies too. He asked that he might not stumble as long as he walked on her, and that she would be gentle with him at night when he turned over on his right side and on his left. He asked her to keep away the snake and the scorpion that wake when the rains come.

"May your summer be kind to us," he said, "and your rains, your autumn, your winter, your frosts and your spring."

Then he promised to speak well of her wherever he went.

"In villages and in the forest, in every gathering on earth, in every meeting of the people, we will say fine things about you."

He ended as he had begun, like a child speaking to his mother.

"O Earth, my Mother, set me down happily in a place that is safe."

The Rigveda is the older book, and it says much less about her. When its poets praise the Earth they nearly always praise the Sky in the same breath, as the Mother and the Father. Only one hymn is hers alone, and it is three verses long.

"Truly, Prithivi, you bear the weight of the mountains," it says. "You are rich in streams, great one, and you bring the soil to life."

The singers call her bright, and a wanderer who goes where she pleases. They say she grips even the lords of the forest, the great trees, and holds them fast in the ground. And they say the rain of heaven pours down on her from the lightning of the cloud.

That is the whole hymn. It is admiring, and a little distant. There is one other place in the Rigveda where she is spoken to closely, and it is not a hymn of praise at all. It is a funeral.

A man had died, and his people had brought him out to be laid in the ground. The mourners had already turned to the living and told them to go back to dancing and laughter and long life. They had taken the bow from the dead man's hand. Now they spoke to him for the last time.

"Go to the lap of the Earth, your mother," they said. "She is wide and very kind. She is a young woman, soft as wool to the generous man. May she keep you safe."

Then they spoke to her.

"Rise up a little, Earth. Do not press down on him heavily. Let him come in easily, and be good to him. Cover him the way a mother draws her skirt over her child."

They laid the clods over him and asked that they might be a home and a shelter for him.