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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[Vol. V.
in bloom through all the seasons, with plenty of well-filled tanks and wells and pools, with sounds everywhere of cranes and buzzing bees and cuckoos and ruddy geese and peacocks and numerous flights of parrots and blue jays, and with the music of lutes in the diversions of courtesans. And when it had thus become a place of many charms, as being known to be the site of an infinite number of parks, and pleasing with inexhaustible pools of water, and crowded with many people, and the dwelling-place of innumerable courtesans, and the abode of a countless number of merchants, there came down there, from the silver mountain (Kailasa), accompanied by Girija (Pârvati), with great gladness, the god Sómanátha (Śiva), who has the water-lilies that are his feet made tawny by the mass of the multitude of the rays that dart forth from the jowels inlaid in the tiaras of all the gods, and who is a very tree of paradise having for the ripening of its fruits the accomplishment of the desires of worshippers who bow down before him in sapplication.
(L. 17)-Among the residents of that town of Sômanátha, in the Brahman quarters, amongst the Brahmans, there became famous one who resembled those (well-known) Vyâsa and Suka and Vamadêva and Paraśara and Kapila and others; namely he, Purushottama, who was called the best of Brahmaņs,- belonging to the Srivatsa gôtra ; praised by all other) Bråhmans ; acquainted with all the Vedas and Pédurgas ; of an excellent disposition through possessing the virtue of pare behaviour. The good wife of that Brahman was Padmâmbike of pure behaviour, devoted to her husband, who by her virtuous disposition caused herself to be likened to both Sitådêvi (the wife of Rama) and the wife of that (well-known) Satyatapas(?). And, that husband and wife having remained for a long time without offspring, one day, having come to know the saying of the Veda that "there is no heaven for him who has no son," the famous Purushottama, who practised truth and purity, did worship, together with his wife, to Sambhu, in order to obtain a son, saying " Isa is the protection from misfortune."
(L. 20)-At that same time, when Mahesvara (Śiva), whose feet, rosembling water-lilies, are worshipped by the crowd of gods and demons, - with Keśava (Vishna) and Vasava (Indra) and Abjabhava (Brahman) in attendance upon him, and surrounded by countless Ganas, and accompanied by Uma (Pârvati),- was enjoying the delight of an interchange of pleasing conversations in royal darbdr in a delightful part of the mountain Kaiļåga, Nárada, the leader of the Ganas, spake thos:-“While Obila, Dåsa, Chenna, Siriyala, Halayudha, Bana, Udbhata, and Malaysvara who came here in human form, and Kesavaraja, and innumerable other Ganas, resigning the happiness of earthly life, have been dwelling here in this
1 Hinen Tsiang mentions "silver mountain," and appears to place it in the country of O-ki-si, somewhere on the north of the Himalaya range : be says-" this mountain is very high and extensive; it is from this place that the silver is dug which supplies the Western countries with their silver currency" (Life, p. 36).
The text perhaps means to say that Alande was also known by the name of Somanathapa
• The akahara before the tya at the end of line 18 is small and imperfectly formed, and is almost quite illegible. I can only conjectare that it is sa. Satyatapas appears to be ". Muni who was once a hunter but, after performing severe susterities, obtained, s a boon from Darvssss, that he should become a grent sage and saint." Bat it is usually SitA and Arundhatt (wife of Vasishtba), who sre quoted as patterns for wives to imitate.
• We seem to have here some well-known proverb. Léka, 'world,' mast stand for paralóka, 'the other world, heaven.' -For a very similar expression, Prof. Kielhorn has referred me to aputrandi kila na santi 16kd Ablak (Kadambari, Peterson's edition, p. 61, line 14).-words which the queen heard at a recitation of the Mahabharata.
. The reference here is to various famous Brivs asints, most of whom appear to be mentioned in the Banara. gurdna.- Mr. H. Krishna Sastri bas obliged me with other references for some of these periode: for Sirisi (in Kanaree) or Siruttondaniyaņår in Tamil) the fourteenth ásodia of the Vishabhendravijayo of Sbadakshari, and also the Tamil Periyapurdnam (prose version, Madras edition, p. 217 ff.), with the difference that Biriyaļa is here represented as the son of Sirattonda, and not identical with him, as asserted in the other work; for Halayudha, the fifteenth depdea of the Prishabháidrarijaya, which incidentally mentions also Dans and Chenna (verses 4, 6, after the introduction); and for Malayevara (in Kanarese) or Sérsmåp. Perumal (in Tamil), the Periya purdnan, p. 220 t, which says that, when ruling at the town of Kodungojůr, he became a
