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470
TILAKAMANJARI OF DHANAPĀLA
elephant corniced support provided with four pillars having images of elephants beside the pillars, on which the main dais of the stage or any other surface of a chamber is required to be stationed.
Dhanapāla refers to Mattavāraṇas in the context of a panygeric (inscribed on a marble stone slab placed or fixed in the interior of or the centre of the western wall of the window after Samaraketu had supported his body on the surface of an elephant-corniced-pedestal. He also refers to an elephant-corniced pedestal made of sticks of gem-stones, at the gate of a stone-pavilion and one just at the gate. The boats and canoes were hard made having been prepared out of hard wood. The wooden pillars supporting the boats were called “Kūpastambhakas?.? A window made of gems being very costly and the grotto abodes made of jewels have also been referred to.* The divine shrine seen by Samaraketu after he had finished his sea-voyage is also a fine description of architectural specimen. The shrine had its path of descent at the door of the pavilion expansive and shining on account of the series of steps made of the slabs of the moonstone-gem. It was decorated with many elephant-corniced-pedestals made of ruby. It had the tops of its pillars made of topaz-stones scraping the sky and occupied by the puppets or dolls or bracket female figures made of gem stones as if they were the celestial nymphs come down from the celestial world in order to supervise the architectural get up outlying the skill of Viśvakarmā. It had an untimely sport of festival of lamps organised by the ewers of topaz having their tips upraised and getting illumined by the acts of collyrium wicks performed by the rows of fresh-clouds darkened byconsuming water from the ocean and reeling about on high. It had peacocks concealed being guessed from the cries of the lattices made of the sticks of diamond gems with their plumes covered up by the rain-bow shining constantly. It had white buntings waving by the breeze assuming the garb of female cranes at the halo of lustre azure like the nebula nubilous with clouds, of the Amala-Sāraka (Sanctum-sanctorum) born of i.e. made of the Mahānīla stones and circumambiating the faces of the quarters. It had the tips of the sky scraped (lit. kissed) by its lofty pinnacle gone up to reduce the solar orb to the state of an ewer. It was engirt round by a circle of vallum of apparent expanse or breadth, made of marble of pure species having rows of steps of stones with series of tops stretched out. It was surrounded on all sides by the mansions of gods (i.e. temples) made of gold, as if by the peaks
1. 564184pfaget: 19:1TM Vol. II p. 281. 2. 74740144: Ibid. Vol. II p. 286. 3. HET Uaai47: Ibid. Vol. II p. 291. 4. HOTJET Ibid. Vol. II p. 298.
