By Ritambhara
The Atharvaveda earth hymn, known as the Bhumi Sukta, opens the twelfth book of the Atharvaveda in its Shaunaka recension. Its 63 verses address Prithivi, the earth, as a living body. The 35th verse is a vow spoken by a person about to dig into the ground.
yat te bhūme vikhanāmi kṣipraṃ tad api rohatu
mā te marma vimṛgvari mā te hṛdayam arpipam
Whatever I dig from you, O Earth, may that grow back quickly. O purifier, may I never strike your vital points or your heart.
What the verse claims
The verb vikhanāmi joins the prefix vi, meaning out or apart, to the root khan, to dig. The verse accepts that people will dig. It then sets a condition in the imperative rohatu, from the root ruh, to grow: the opening must close fast. The second line names what the digger must spare. A marman is a vital point, where an injury kills, and hṛdaya is the heart. Ralph Griffith’s translation of 1895-96 renders the final verb arpipam as pierce and the address vimṛgvari as Purifier. The verse treats the earth as a body that a careless digger can fatally wound.
The earth as mother in the same hymn
Verse 12 supplies the reason for that care. Its central phrase is mātā bhūmiḥ putro ahaṃ pṛthivyāḥ, the earth is my mother and I am her son. The hymn’s first verse lists what sustains the earth: truth, great and potent order (ṛta), consecration, austerity, the sacred word and sacrifice. In this hymn the ground stays in place through human conduct. A son who digs into his mother’s body owes her restraint and time to heal.
The verse and India’s degraded land
India now measures how much of the ground has failed to grow back. The Space Applications Centre of ISRO published the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India in 2021. It found 97.85 million hectares degraded in 2018-19, equal to 29.7 per cent of the country’s area (Down To Earth, 2021). A government reply in the Rajya Sabha confirmed that the degraded area had grown since the 2011-13 assessment (PTI, 2022). In the hymn’s terms, close to a third of India’s land has failed the test of rohatu.
Verse 35 permits use of the earth on two conditions. Whatever a person takes must grow back quickly, and the land’s vital organs must stay intact. A mine or a farm that leaves soil unable to recover breaks both. The hymn requires every person who digs to measure the work against the earth’s power to heal.
