________________
48
ŚRNGĀRAMANJARIKATHA
the form of darkness having slipped off on one side; like the playing ball of Rati turned red due to the red-dye on her palm; and which was like a golden pot for the consecration of the future sovereign, the mind-born one. Then giving pleasure to women, rising from the ocean, being surrounded by constellations, and giving joy to the kumudas, (44) the Lord of the Stars, shone brightly, destroying the demons in the form of darkness as black as powdered collyrium. When the moonlight produced the fire of love, which tore open the clusters of kumudas and the hearts of the cakraväkas; which destroyed the darkness pervading the by-paths and the pride of the haughty women, which agitated the sea full of waves and the hearts of the lovers, which pained the elephants' tusks and the minds of the separated ones; and which was being drunk in on all sides by the families of the cakorakas with their beaks open and by the eyes of the people and yet was on the increase ...... when such words of the friends clever in bringing about love quarrels and unions were heard spoken to the proud women: 'Friend, Madana is irresistible, the mature rays of the moon are unbearable, youth is shortlived, and the bond of love is unsteady'; when the lights of the mansions first enkindled were clearly perceived in the bodies of the separated women like the reflection of the sparks of the fire of love, when the wanton women whose hearts were filled with passions sent to their lovers the messengers forgetting and instructing the messages again and again, when the ladies wrote the messages of love with the juice of the musk on the leaves of the ketaki in the lamp of the moon; when the women looking again and again at the paths of the lovers decorated their houses; when smoke of the kālāguru încense issued from the windows of the vāsakasajjās like the measures of the inflamed fire of love; when the abhisărikās went in all the directions like the presiding deities of the moonlight, with their bodies covered with white garments, with the powder of thick ghanasāra sprinkled over the cheeks, with the pearl ornaments on every limb, with the whole body anointed with sandalpaste and with their braids of hair tied with the blooming mālatī flowers. Then the whole earth was as if expanded with nectar, flooded by the milk of ocean, made of crystalline stone, made of the lustre of the Dramida women's teeth recently polished, made from the inner part of the leaves of the palmtree, be-sprinkled with molten silver, and as if carved out of the tusks of elephants; when it (the earth) possessed the beauty of the Candraloka, when the moon slowly whitened the directions and became pure and rose up in the sky, transferring its own redness to the minds of couples.
At that time the king sent MUKHARAKA to fetch her. She also, looking at the road with her neck raised like the agriculturists
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
