Part 8: Sanatkumāra’s childhood

The child, his body fair as a piece of gold, delighting the eyes of the people like a young moon, gradually grew up. Passing from lap to lap of kings, he looked just like a haṃsa going from lotus to lotus. Even as a child, just from being seen, he stole the eyes and minds of gazelleeyed women by his incomparable beauty. He drank in grammar with its divisions, the mother of complete knowledge, which was poured from his guru’s mouth, as easily as a sip of water. He grasped completely military science and statecraft, pillars of the palace of sovereignty, like other pillars in the form of arms for himself. He acquired all the other arts also with ease; and gradually grew up like a spotless moon (kalānidhi). His body was forty-one and a half bows tall, and he attained youth from childhood like heaven from the world of mortals.