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himself. Even on hearing the lengthy speech, the Sage kept silence and did not give up meditation at all. He might have been, according to him, very courageous or might have been womanish or timid. According to him, the sage, a libidinous one, having no property, must have been remembering secretly that unchaste woman spoiled by himself [i. e. śambara ] in the former birth. He asked the sage whether He, gone abroad along with King Arvinda, rdemembered that He had gone away abandoning her [i. e. Vasundharā] alone in her very childhood just after the marriage ceremony and on returning had seen her alive but transferred to His brother [ or had seen her, the wife of the brother of Kamatha, alive ). It had been a matter of great wonder to himself, sambara said that she, who had been separated from Him after marriage, though desirous of having sexual intercourse, had not been illegally connected with any one other .than Himself and yet had been alive. It had been a matter of great wonder to himself, sambara said, that he had enjoyed objects of sense-organs when he had been separated from Him [i. e. Marubhūti ). Afterwards he said that love cherished by him for Him had been dispelled from his heart owing to the reproach heaped upon him and that reproach slowly goaded him into killing the Sage. Then he requested the Sage to give up meditation and to give him the pleasure of fighting a battle. He said that if He underwent death, the heavenly ladies would compete with one another for having Him for a husband, the Vidyādhara females would wait upon Him in the sky when He would be going His way leading to heaven, and the female cranes, drawn up into lines, thinking Him to be a cloud full of water, would be waiting upon Him.
He told the Sage, looking at the untimely clouds, disturbing the unmatched tranquility of the mind of the Sage, to hear their terrible thundering sounds inaking the peacocks dance, the earth productive and having mushrooms grown up and to behold
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