Gaudavaho

Author(s): Vakpatiraj, Narhari Govind Suru, P L Vaidya, A N Upadhye, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 100

(Lxxxiii)
flooding and flowing turbid water, the skies bespangled with rainbows, peacocks flying up with spreadout plumage, Bhil women, decorated with peacock feathers placed on their ears and collecting Guñja fruit, herds of elephants, wild boars, buffalos, squatting lions, jackals picking up flesh and bones from the rotting carrion, over which crows also have gathered in clusters, lakes full of clumps of Nicula reeds with swans moving through them, swarms of fish, mud-plastered by recent floods, wailing of ospreys and other birds flying overhead to take a dive for picking fish, plantations of water-melons, fields of rice, barley and discoloured sugar-canes, deep wells, multi-coloured forests with grey, green, pink and mixed shades, forest-fires, rat-infested land-tracts and huge anthills, villages with an encircling belt of forest-ranges, looking whitish with houses of newly-laid thatches, solitary temples with a Śiva limga, the resort of lonely travellers, the bells in which, when sounded, spread their echo over long distances, cowherd habitations where visiting travellers drink water, made whitish when poured from milk-containers, the occasional village festivals, being enjoyed mainly by women dressed in coloured sarees and by children, who relish presents of fruit offered to them, singing groups of cowherdesses returning to their homes and these lovely Southern women, anointed with a turmeric pigment, holding, in their abundant hair, a yellowish-pale Ketaka petal which adds to their attraction.
These are some of the features of Nature which the Poet has described with a remarkable gusto, over which he has expended more than 200 Gāthās in his Poem. This, obiviously, is blatant Realism, because the pictures he gives are just objective, ' photographic prints' in black and white, of his mental impressions, true in every detail