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Dhammapada · narration sample

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Rig Veda · 983 of 1027

Mandala 10: HYMN CXLVI. Aranyani.

1.GODDESS of wild and forest who seemest to vanish from the sight. How is it that thou seekest not the village? Art thou not afraid?

2.What time the grasshopper replies and swells the shrill cicala’s voice, Seeming to sound with tinkling bells, the Lady of the Wood exults.

3.And, yonder, cattle seem to graze, what seems a dwelling-place appears: Or else at eve the Lady of the Forest seems to free the wains.

4.Here one is calling to his cow, another there hath felled a tree: At eve the dweller in the wood fancies that somebody hath screamed.

5.The Goddess never slays, unless some murderous enemy approach. Man eats of savoury fruit and then takes, even as he wills, his rest.

6.Now have I praised the Forest Queen, sweet-scented, redolent of balm, The Mother of all sylvan things, who tills not but hath stores of food.

Asked of Guide

Why does Aranyani 'seemest to vanish from the sight' and avoid the village?

The hymn says Aranyani is the “Goddess of wild and forest” whose presence is tied to untamed places; she delights in the grasshopper’s call and the cicala’s tinkling bells, which mark her realm. Her vanishing from sight signals that she belongs to the woods’ hidden life, appearing in sounds, scents, and fleeting signs like cattle grazing or a wain set free at eve.

The poem insists she provides and nurtures—“The Mother of all sylvan things, who tills not but hath stores of food”—so her absence from the village expresses autonomy, not neglect. This resembles William Wordsworth’s portraits of nature’s independent spirit in The Excursion, where presence often shows through small, lived details rather than dwellings.

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