Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 235

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Wishing to employ the cakra-jewel for the conquest of various countries, the King went to the bath-house for an auspicious bath. There, his collection of ornaments laid aside, wearing white garments suitable for the bath, facing the east, the King sat on the baththrone. The King was anointed with oils--the oil with a thousand ingredients and others, as fragrant as if made of the essence of the blooms of the trees of heaven. Then the King was bathed by expert shampooers, who knew which places were to be rubbed and which not rubbed, according to the four kinds of shampooing.--the source of comfort to the flesh, bone, skin, and hair, with the three kinds-gentle, medium, and harsh-of touch. They polished the King quickly like a mirror, a vessel of spotless light, with fine divine-powder. Some noble women with golden pitchers held up in their hands, like ponds of beauty with new lotuses with upraised stalks ; some women holding silver water-pitchers, like waters that had become congealed turned into vessels for containing water; some women carrying in their beautiful hands pitchers of sapphire giving the illusion of toyblue-lotuses; other women carrying divine jeweled pitchers, their extreme beauty being increased by the great splendor of the nail-jewels, in turn bathed the King with fragrant, purified streams of water, as the goddesses had bathed the Jinendra.
Then after he was bathed and rubbed with divine ointment; adorned with white clothes as if by the light of the quarters on all sides; wearing on his forehead a new auspicious sandal-tilaka like a new shoot sprung up from the tree of glory; supporting pearl ornaments spotless as the heap of his own glory, as the sky supports the shining multitudes of stars; ornamented with his crown, like a palace with a finial, which shamed the sun by its mass of wavering light; decorated with chauris that resembled ear-ornaments, frequently raised by the lotus-hands of courtesans;