AV 5.19a

1. The gods, O king, did not give to thee this (Cow) to eat. Do not, O prince, seek to devour the cow of the Brâhmana, which is unfit to be eaten! 2. The prince, beguiled by dice, the wretched one who has lost as a stake his own person, he may, perchance, eat the cow of the Brâhmana, (thinking), 'let me live to-day (if) not to-morrow'! 3. Enveloped (is she) in her skin, as an adder with evil poison; do not, O prince, (eat the cow) of the Brâhmana: sapless, unfit to be eaten, is that cow! 4. Away does (the Brâhmana) take regal power, destroys vigour; like fire which has caught does he burn away everything. He that regards the Brâhmana as fit food drinks of the poison of the taimâta-serpent. 5. He who thinks him (the Brahman) mild, and slays him, he who reviles the gods, lusts after wealth, without thought, in his heart Indra kindles a fire; him both heaven and earth hate while he lives. 6. The Brâhmana must not be encroached upon, any more than fire, by him that regards his own body! For Soma is his (the Brâhmana's) heir, Indra protects him from hostile plots. 7. He swallows her (the cow), bristling with a hundred hooks, (but) is unable to digest her, he, the fool who, devouring the food of the Brahmans, thinks, 'I am eating a luscious (morsel).' 8. (The Brahman's) tongue turns into a bow. string, his voice into the neck of an arrow; his windpipe, his teeth are bedaubed with holy fire: with these the Brahman strikes those who revile the gods, by means of bows that have the strength to reach the heart, discharged by the gods. 9. The Brâhmanas have sharp arrows, are armed with missiles, the arrow whi ch they hurl goes not in vain; pursuing him with their holy fire and their wrath, even from afar, do they pierce him. 10. They who ruled over a thousand, and were themselves ten hundred, the Vaitahavya, when they devoured the cow of the Brâhmana, perished. 11. The cow herself, when slaughtered, came down upon the Vaitahavyas.