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SATAPATHA-BRAHMANA.
70
up after them: too long he deemed it that he should put on his garment. Then the Gandharvas produced a flash of lightning, and she beheld him naked even as by daylight. Then, indeed, she vanished: 'Here I am back,' he said, and lo! she had vanished1. Wailing with sorrow he wandered all over Kurukshetra. Now there is a lotus-lake there, called Anyata plakshâ: He walked along its bank; and there nymphs were swimming about in the shape of swans 2.
5. And she (Urvasf), recognising him, said, 'This is the man with whom I have dwelt.' They then said, 'Let us appear to him!'-'So be it!' she replied; and they appeared to him 3.
6. He then recognised her and implored her (Rig-veda X, 95, 1), 'Oh, my wife, stay thou, cruel in mind let us now exchange words! Untold, these secrets of ours will not bring us joy in days to
1 Cf. C. Gaedicke, Der Accusativ im Veda (1880), p. 211. Previous translators had assigned the words 'punar emi' (I come back) to Urvasî; and in view of the corresponding passage in paragraph 13, the new interpretation is just a little doubtful.
'The text has 'âti,' some kind of water-bird-galakarapakshiviseshah, Sây.-(probably Gr. mora; Lat. anas, anat-is; Anglo-S. æned, Germ. Ente).
That is, they became visible, or rather recognisable to him by showing themselves in their real forms,-pakshirûpam vihâya svakiyena râpena prâdur babhuvuh, Sây.—In Kâlidâsa’s plays, both Urvast and Sakuntalâ become invisible by means of a magic veil (tiraskarinf, 'making invisible') with which has been compared the magic veil by which the swan-maidens change their form. A. Weber, Ind. Stud. I, p. 197; A. Kuhn, Herabkunft, p. 91.
Manasâ tish/ha ghore,-possibly it may mean, 'O cruel one, be thou constant in (thy) mind;' or, as Kuhn takes it, 'pay attention, O cruel one.' Sâyana, however, takes it as above.
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