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72
Tales from Indian Mythology
you eternal youth and beauty and Ravi, perennial radiance, and the saptarishis shall address all their oblations to you."
"I do not know what to say," submitted Nahusha. "We warn you, think well before you decline our offer." "My Lords, as you command.”
On an auspicious day, Nahusha was proclaimed king of the gods. As he had the protection of the Trimurthis, because of the splendid succession of his good deeds while on Earth, and as all the lesser deities had sacrificed part of thheir glory for his sake, he acquired an unassailable supremacy of which be became gradually conscious. He honestly believed that there was no power in the Three Worlds apart from his own, and he was proud that the pleasures of Indra's palace, which were now his, had come to him unasked, as though in reward for his long and intense waiting in Bharat. "What more can I achieve ?” he asked himself. "Nothing," was his narcissistic reply. "What is the purpose of the super-abundance of luxury in which I find myself ?. It is here, certainly, not to be spurned."
Thus he slowly became a slave of his senses. Now he would summon Urvasi, Menaka, Tilottama and a multitude of junior apsaras and make love to them in public, now he would kick the Gandharvas and Kinnaras if their music bored him, now he would most irreverently stroke the beards of the rishis, now he would command Narada and Tumburu to sing his glory, now he would try to take liberties with the goddesses and the wives of the sages, now he would threaten to launch fantastic expeditions of conquest to Shiva's Kailasa, Vishnu's
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