Atharva Veda 6.142.2

In its original context

The Atharva Veda is the most down-to-earth of the four Vedas. Alongside its prayers it is full of short, practical hymns for everyday life: for healing, for a safe home, for love, for a good harvest. Hymn 6.142 is one of these: three verses spoken to barley, one of the oldest grains people grew.

The first verse tells the barley to rise up and grow thick by its own strength, to burst every container meant to hold it, and asks that no lightning from the sky strike it down. This second verse calls the barley a listener, as if it could hear the farmer, and tells it to rise up there, where it is being called, as high as the sky, and to be as inexhaustible as the ocean.

It was most likely spoken in the fields, at sowing or as the crop came up. Its pictures (the sky, the ocean, overflowing jars) are generous on purpose. They are what a farmer hopes for a small green shoot: room to rise, and no limit to what it might become.