Gaudavaho

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

Page 27

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“Now come gradually with their charm the days of the cold season (winter), the swans cackling at midnight and the sunlight bereft of its bright strength " ( 270). Thus follows the description of winter for over six Gāthās ( 270 - 276 ) and the King, “casting his eyes on the village-borders thriving in the cold season, gradually reached the region distinguished by the big Sona river" ( 276). From there he goes to the Vindhya mountain where ascends the sun with great difficulty' (280 ) and which, with its peaks penetrating the sky and the sky filling the caves, has screwed up and steadied, as it were, the surfaces of the sky and the earth'( 283 ). The Vindhya-Vāsini Goddess :
Here," directed by the Sabaras clothed only in leaves, he goes to the temple of the Goddess situated in the cave of the Vindhya mountain and pays his homage to her with requisite ceremonies " ( 338 ) in a long Kulaka of 53 Gathās ( 285–337). She is variously called by him as Madhavi, Bhairavi. Candi, Nārāyanī, Sankarī, Kālī, Sabarī, Gauri and Tāpass in the course of his homage, in which he says, “The arched entrance of your temple is embellished with strings of bells, snatched, as it were, from the whole family-herd of the buffalo-Demon seized: by you" ( 285 ). “The head of the buffalo-Demon, hit by the brilliance of your toe-nails, looks like a foot-stool in the form of a block of snow placed by your father Himālaya for helping you to ascend” (286). "The mountain Himālaya, being your father, has been elevated in dignity; so, too, is the mountain Vindhya, by the grace of your residence in its cave" (290). "Physically you stay in just half of the body of the crescent-decorated God ( Siva ); in His heart, however, O Sankarī, you have complete, undivided scope (to occupy)” (292). "Not