Chapter CXV - The same subject continued

Argument:—Description of the hills and forests, rivers and other objects on all sides.

The royal companions related:—

1. [Sanskrit available]
Hear, O high minded lord! the Kinnara females from their abodes of leafy bowers, where they enjoy themselves with singing their songs; and the Kinnara also being enrapt with the music, listen to it attentively by forgetting their business of the day.

2. [Sanskrit available]
There are the Himalaya, Malaya, Vindhya, Krauncha, Mahendra, Mandara, Dardura and other mountains; which from their distant view, appear to the sight of the observer, to be clothed in robes of hoary clouds, and seen as heaps of stones covered with the dry leaves of trees.

3. [Sanskrit available]
Those distant and indistinct chains of boundary mountains, appear to stretch themselves like the walls of cities; and those rivers which are seen to fall into the ocean with their gurgling noise; appear as the woof and texture threads of the broad sheet of waters of the ocean.

4. [Sanskrit available]
The ten sides of the sky, which are spread over the tops of mountains; appear as the royal consorts, looking on thee from their lofty edifices, and smiling gladly at thy success. The many-coloured and roaring clouds in the sky, resembling the variegated birds of air, warbling their notes on high; and the rows of trees which are dropping down the showers of flowers from high, appear as the arms of heavenly nymphs, shedding their blessings upon thy head with their hands.

5. [Sanskrit available]
The high hills overgrown with rows of trees, and stretching all along the sea shore; appear as a ramparts; and these being beaten by the surges, seem as mere moss gathered on the coast.

6. [Sanskrit available]
O! the extensive, all sustaining and wondrous body of the ocean, that supported the body of Hari sleeping upon it; contained the unrighteous creation at the great deluge, and it covered all the mountains and rocks and the submarine fire under it.

7. [Sanskrit available]
There is the northern ocean, to which the Jambu river, pours all the gold of the Meru or polar mountain, and it contains numerous cities and forests and mountains and countries. It washes the face of the sky and all its lights, and is therefore adored by gods as well as men.

8. [Sanskrit available]
Here is this polar mountain, reaching to the solar sphere, and presenting the trees on its top as its cloud-capt head; may the earth extending to this mountain be thine, and may not this mount which hides the sun under its clouds, obstruct the extension of thy realm.

9. [Sanskrit available]
Here is this Malaya mount on the south, growing the fragrant sandal wood, which converts all other woods to its nature. Its sweet paste decorates the persons of gods, men and demons, and is put as a spot on the forehead like the frontal eye [of] Siva; and is sprinkled over the body be like the bedewed persons of females with sweat.

10. [Sanskrit available]
The waves of the ocean are continually laving the coast, overgrown with forests of the sandal wood, and encircled by folds of snakes; while the woodland nymphs wandering on this mount, throw a lustre about it by the beauty of their persons.

11. [Sanskrit available]
Here is the hill called Krauncha, with its groves resonant with the cooing of cuckoos; and its rugged caves and rivers resounding harshly to one another; while the bamboos are crackling with their mutual friction, and the humble-bees have been humming about; among these is heard the warbling of emigrating cranes on high, and the loud screams of peacocks, which are terrific to the serpent tribe.

12. [Sanskrit available]
Behold here, O great lord, the sport of woodland nymphs, in the groves of their soft leafy bowers; and listen to the tinkling sound of their bracelets, which are so sweet to the ears of hearers.

13. [Sanskrit available]
There behold the drizzling ichor, exuding from the foreheads of elephants, and the swarming bees giddy with the drink; which has made the sea to melt in tears, on account of its being slighted by them.

14. [Sanskrit available]
Lo there the fair moon, with his train of fairy stars, sporting in their reflections, in the lap of his sire, the milky ocean, from which it was churned as its butter or froth.

15. [Sanskrit available]
See there the tender creepers, dancing merrily on the table-lands of the Malaya mountain; displaying their red petals as the palms of their hands, and winking with their eyes formed of fluttering bees. The blooming flowers bespeak their vernal festivity, and the warbling cuckoos fill the groves with their festive music.

16. [Sanskrit available]
Here the rain-drops produce the pearly substance of vansa-lochana, in the hollows of bamboos; and the gaja-mati or frontal pearl, in the skull of elephants; and large pearls in the womb of pearl-shells. So the words of the wise, are productive of unlike effects in different persons.

17. [Sanskrit available]
So the gems are productive of various effects, according as they are produced in varied forms in different receptacles; as in men and stones, in seas and forests, in frogs, clouds and elephants. They gladden and distract the mind, cause fear and error, fever and death, and many other preternatural and supernatural effects.

18. [Sanskrit available]
Lo here the city smiling under the rising moon, and singing in praise of that ambrosial luminary, through all its windows, doorways and openings, as it were from the mouths of its females; and responsive to his eulogy sang by the Mandara mountain, from the many mouths of its caves and caverns, and the pipes of hallow bamboos.

19. [Sanskrit available]
The wondering women of the siddhas, behold with their astonished and uplifted faces and eyes, a large body of cloud borne away by the winds; and dubitate in their minds, whether it is a mountain peak carried away by the winds, or it is a forest of the snowy mountain flying upward in the air, or it is a column to measure the distance of the earth and sky, or a balance to weigh their weight.

20. [Sanskrit available]
See the moorlands at the foot of the Mandara mountain, how cool they are with the cooling breezes wafting the coldness of the waves of Ganges; and see its footlands inhabited by the fair Vidyadhara tribe; and behold its flowery woodlands all around, overtopped by shady clouds of flowers above.

21. [Sanskrit available]
See the forests and groves and the hursts spread there abouts, with the huts and hamlets and habitations of men scattered therein. Look at the holy shrines, and the sacred brooks and fountains lying in them, the very sight of which, disperses our woes, poverty and iniquities.

22. [Sanskrit available]
Mountain crags and ridges, overhung on all sides of the horizon; the dales and caverns, and the groves and grottos, are overshadowed by clouds; the limpid lakes, resemble the clear firmament; such sights are sure to melt away masses of our crimes.

23. [Sanskrit available]
Lo here my lord, the ravines of the Malaya mountain, redolent with the odour of the aromatic sandal wood; and there the Vindhyan hills, abounding with infuriate elephants; the Kailasa mount yielding the best kind of gold, in its olden laureate lore; and the Mount Mahendra, fraught with its mineral ore (aguru—agallochum); the summits of the snowy mountain are plenteous, with the best kind of horses and medicinal plants; thus while every place [is] found to abound with richest productions of nature, why does man set to repine in his time worn cell, like an old and blind mouse in its dirty hole.

24. [Sanskrit available]
Behold the dark and rainy cloud on high, appearing as another world, to submerge the earth under its flood; and threatening it with its flashing and forky lightnings, and gliding as frisky shrimp fishes in the etherial ocean.

25. [Sanskrit available]
Oh! the bleak rainy winds, blowing with the keen icy blasts of frozen snows, poured down profusely by the raging rainy clouds on high. They are now howling aloud in the air, and now chilling the blood, and shaking the body with horripilation.

26. [Sanskrit available]
Oh! the cold winds of winter are blowing, in their course with the dark clouds of heaven; and scattering cluster of flowers, from the twigs and branches of trees. And there are the drizzling rain drops dropping in showers, amidst the thick forests, redolent with the odours of kadamba blossoms.

27. [Sanskrit available]
There the winds are bearing the fragrance of the breaths of languid females, as if it were the celestial odour of ambrosia, stolen by and borne on the wings of zephyr.

28. [Sanskrit available]
Here the gentle breezes are breathing, with the breath of the new blown lilies and lotuses of the lake, and sweeping their tender odours to the land; and the blasts are bursting the flakes of the folded clouds, and wafting the perfumes from the gardens and groves.

29. [Sanskrit available]
Yonder the mild airs are lulling our toils, cooled by their contact with the evening clouds of heaven; and resembling the vassal florists, perfumed all over in their culling the flowers from the royal gardens.

30. [Sanskrit available]
Some of these are perfumed with the odours of different flowers, and others with the fragrance of lilies and lotuses; in some places they are scattering showers of blossoms, and shedding the dust of flowers at others. Some where the air is blowing from the hoary mountain of frost, and at others from those of blue, black and red minerals.

31. [Sanskrit available]
The sun is scattering his rays, as firebrands in some places, and these are spreading a conflagration with loud cluttering in the woods, like the riotous rabble in a country.

32. [Sanskrit available]
The winds like wicked attendants on the sun, are spreading the conflagration caused by the solar rays; and carry their clattering noise afar.

33. [Sanskrit available]
The cooling winds blowing from the woods, and bedewed by the gentle beams of the moon, or moistened by the watery particles of heaving waves; though cheering to the souls of others, appear yet as fiery hot to separated lovers.

34. [Sanskrit available]
Lo here, O lord! how the savara women, on the low lands of the eastern main, are covered in their rude and rough leafy garments, and wearing their sounding bracelets of brass; and see how they are strutting about, in the giddiness of their prime youth.

35. [Sanskrit available]
See how these newly loving lasses, are clinging round the bodies of their mates, for fear of darkness of the approaching night; in the manner of timid snakes twining about the trunk of sandal wood trees.

36. [Sanskrit available]
Struck with fear by the alarm, given by the sounding bell at day break; the loving consort leans on the bosom of her lover, as the darkness lingers in the enclosed room.

37. [Sanskrit available]
There is a furze of kinsuka flowers, blooming as firebrands, on the border of the southern sea, which is continually washing them with lavations of its waves, as if it wanted to extinguish them.

38. [Sanskrit available]
The winds are wafting their fuming farina, which are flying upwards like mists of hazy clouds to heaven; the flowers are falling about like flames of fire, and the birds and black bees are hovering over them as extinguished cinders of fire.

39. [Sanskrit available]
Behold there on the other side, the real flashes of living wild fire, blazing in the forests on the east; and to their flames are borne above the mountain tops, by the flying winds of the air.

40. [Sanskrit available]
See the slow moving clouds, shrouding the lowlands lying at the foot of the Krauncha mountain; and observe the crowding peacocks dancing under them, and screaming aloud with their grave and shrill cries to the clouds. Lo there the gusts of rain-winds rising high, and blowing the fruits and flowers and leaves of trees afar on all sides.

41. [Sanskrit available]
Behold the sun setting mountain in the west, with its thousand peaks of glittering gold; shining amidst the dusky hue of the evening sky; and the sloping sun descending below in his chariot whirling down with its rattling wheels in the rustling of evening winds. (But the solar car is a velocipedes with a single wheel only).

42. [Sanskrit available]
The moon that rises upon the eastern mount of Meru like a full blown flower, in order to give light to the darkened mansion of this world; is itself accompanied by it black spots, sitting as black bees upon the blossom. Hence there is no good thing in this perverted world, which is free from its fault and frailty.

43. [Sanskrit available]
The moon light is shining like the laughter of the god Rudra, amidst his dome of the triple world; or it is as the white wash of the great hall of the universe, or it likens [to] the milky fluid of the milky ocean of the sky.

44. [Sanskrit available]
Look on all sides of the sky, tinged with the evening twilight, and the variegated hues of mountain tops; and filled with the milky beams of the moon, that was churned out by the Mount Mandara from the milky ocean.

45. [Sanskrit available]
Look there, O incomparable lord! those hosts of Guhyka ghosts, that are as hideous as the large tala or palm trees;and also those puny Vetala younglings are pouring upon the ill-fated dominions of the Hunas;and devouring troubled inhabitants at night.

46. [Sanskrit available]
The face of the moon shines brightly like the beauteous face of a fairy, so long as it does not appear out of its mansion at night; but it is shorn of its beams, and appears as a piece of fleecy cloud, by its appearance at day light; as the fairy face becomes disgraced, by appearing out of the inner apartment.

47. [Sanskrit available]
Look at the lofty peaks of the snowy mountain, covered with the fair vesture of the bright moon beams;and see its crags washed by floods of the falling Ganges; behold its head capped by perpetual snows, and begirt by creepers of snowy whiteness.

48. [Sanskrit available]
Behold there Mandara mountain touching the sky, and crowning the forest with its lofty ridges; here the winds are wafting the cradle chimes of Apsara nymphs, and there the mountainous mines gemming in various hues.

49. [Sanskrit available]
See the high hills all around, abounding with blooming flowers like offerings to the gods; see the thickening clouds round their loins, and resounding hoarsely within their hollows, while the starry heaven shines over their heads.

50. [Sanskrit available]
There is the Kailasa mountain on the north, vying with firmament in its brightness; below it there is the hermitage of Skanda, and the moon shines in her brilliance above.

51. [Sanskrit available]
Lo, the god Indra has let loose his winds, to break the branches of trees, and demolish the huts on the ground, the fragments of which they have been carrying afar.

52. The winds are wafting the profuse fragrance of flowers after the rains, and filling the nostrils of men with their odours; while the flights of bees are floating as clouds in the azure sky.

53. [Sanskrit available]
[Sanskrit available]
Methinks the goddess Flora has chosen for her abode, the blooming flowers in the forests; limpid waters in the marshy grounds, and in villages abounding in fruitful trees, and flourishing fields.

54. [Sanskrit available]
The windows are overgrown with creeping plants in the rains, and the house tops are decorated with the flowers of the climbing creepers upon them. The ground is strewn over with the dropping flowers up to the heels, and the breezes are blowing the dust of the flowers all about. All these have made the woodlands the seats of the sylvan gods.

55. [Sanskrit available]
The rains have converted the rustic village, to a romantic paradise or fairy land; by the blooming champaka flowers, the swinging of the rural nymphs in their cradles, of creepers, by the warbling of birds and gurgling of water-falls, the blossoming of the tall palm trees in the skirts; the tender creepers blooming with clusters of snow white blossom, the dancing of peacocks on the tops of houses, and the borders shaded by the sal trees; and the rainy clouds hanging over the village and the bordering hills.

56. [Sanskrit available]
Again the soft and sweet breathing breezes, the variegated leaves of the plants and creepers, the verdure of the village, the cries of cranes and other fowls, and the wild notes of the foresters; these together with the jollity of the swains, and the merriment of the pastoral people, over their plenty of milk, curd, butter and ghee, and their glee in their peaceful abodes, add a charm to this hilly tract.