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Introduction
CCIXL
"Here is the Brahmī river purifying Heaven and Earth, cutting off all sins and bearing the marine fire; the story of whose account is worth listening to, and whose waters are sweet to cattle and fordable by boats." People going by bullocks and people going by boats do not care for their bullocks and boats being engrossed in the sweet songs of women guarding the rice fields (in the river) songs worth hearing! "In the fortnight sacred to the manes (in the Şarad-Autmn ) the ladies standing, look, from the gavaksha, (the windows, naturally, of the mansions on the bank of the river) at the land covered with grass pleasing to cattle and at the river (Sarasvati) pleasing to the gavāksha" (C. I. vs. 23-25).
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Hemachandra gives the following picture of the out-skirts of the city. Its out-skirts (afja:) are resorted to by coy-boys and camel- boys, having shoulders as muscular as those of bulls, standing on the backs of the animals - outskirts covered with vegetation palatable to cows and camels." (v. 26).
But the glory of Aṇahillapura was its Royal Lake. We have already referred to it (p. p. CLXXXIXCLPC) and we cannot go into its detailed description here. Poets of successive generations have sung of its beauty and magnificence. Suffice it to say that it was a monument which brought forth and revealed the best that was in the princes and the people of Gurjaradeṣa; that it was a place of worship, learning, and out-door recreation for the rich as well as the poor; that it afforded an opportunity to the best engineering skill in the construction of the lake, the Rudra - kūpa, and the feeding channels and to the best artistic talents of the
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