Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

Page 245

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fluttering in a favorable wind, entered the ocean like a boat. After going into the ocean until the water was up to the chariot's hub, the chariot stopped, the horses stumbling, the charioteer in the forepart of the chariot.
Then the King bent the bow and joined the arrowe to the bow-string as an ācārya joins his disciple to merit.287 He made the bow-string twang like the sound of the benedictory stanza at the beginning of the action of the play of battle, a charm for summoning death, Drawing the arrow, the thief of the beauty of the tilaka made on the forehead, from the quiver, the King set it on the bow-string. The King brought the arrow, which conveyed the impression of an axle in the center of a wheel made from the bow, up to the end of his ear. The King discharged the arrow, which had come to the end of his ear as if wishing to say, “What am I to do ?” at the Lord of Varadāma. The arrow, beheld with terror by the mountains under the impression that it was a falling thunderbolt, by the serpents thinking it Garuda, and by the ocean thinking it another submarine fire, making the sky very bright, fell like a meteor in Varadāma's assembly, after it had gone twelve yojanās. When he saw the arrow, like a man sent by an enemy to make destruction, fall before him, the King of Varadāma was enraged. The Lord of Varadāma, resembling an overflowing ocean with his eyebrows agitated like waves, spoke an unrestrained speech. “Who has touched the sleeping lion with his foot and awakened him today? Whose (name-) paper was turned up today by Death to have it read ? Or who, disgusted with life like a leper, threw this arrow into my assembly with violence? With this very arrow, I shall kill him." Saying this, the King of Varadāma, possessed by a demon of anger, arose and took the arrow in his hand.
287 165. There is an untranslatable pun here on adhiguņam, bow-string' and adhi guņam.