The verse and its meaning · Vedas · Vedas — The Gambler's Lament

The Family Left Behind

Rig Veda 10.34.10

जाया तप्यते कितवस्य हीना माता पुत्रस्य चरतः क्व स्वित्। ऋणावा बिभ्यद्धनमिच्छमानोऽन्येषामस्तमुप नक्तमेति

Meaning · English

The gambler's wife, abandoned, suffers; his mother grieves for a son wandering who knows where. In debt and afraid, hungry for money, he slips by night to other people's homes.

The cost of the habit lands first on the people at home. His wife, cast off, is scorched with grief, and the word for her suffering is a word of heat. His mother does not even know where her son has gone. Then the gambler himself: in debt, afraid of everyone, wanting money from anywhere. After dark he goes to other people's houses. The commentator Sāyaṇa reads this as going there to steal. The words themselves say only that he goes, at night, to homes not his own.

A dinner plate is covered with another plate and left on the kitchen table long after midnight for someone who has not come home. The food is cold by morning. That plate is the wife and the mother, still keeping a place for him while, at that same hour, he stands at a stranger's door.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Cold Coals That Burn · Rig Veda 10.34.9
• Next: Dawn Horses, Night Hearth · Rig Veda 10.34.11
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