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CHAPTER FOUR
Vinitā, like the ocean at its boundary, the King remained, a mountain of power.
Winning of the woman-jewel (303–334) There one day Sagara, a depository of all the arts, mounted a spirited horse and went to the riding-ground to ride. There he exercised the clever horse, and gradually taught it better and better gaits. When it had acquired the fifth gait,816 it flew up in the sky, ignoring signals of the bridle, etc., as if supported by evil spirits. The horse, like a Rākşasa in the form of a horse, carried off Sagara, and unhesitatingly dashed forward rapidly into the great forest. By pulling on the bridle angrily and pressing on its sides with his thighs, Sagara stopped the horse, and jumped down. The horse fell helpless on the ground, and the King started out on foot.
When he had gone a short distance, he saw a large pool like moonlight fallen to the ground, overcome by the rays of the sun. He bathed in it to remove fatigue, like a forest-elephant, and drank the water, sweet, clear, fragrant with lotuses, and cool. He left the pool, stood on the bank, and saw before him a maiden like the goddess of the water. Seeing her with a face like a young lotus, with eyes like a blue lotus, with the water of loveliness with high waves, with breasts like a pair of cakravākas, beautiful with proud hands and feet like blooming red lotuses, the Lakşmi of the pool embodied, he thought: “Is she an Apsaras, a Vyantari, a Nāga-maiden, or a Vidyādhari ? For such as she could not be an ordinary woman. The water of the pool does not make such joy in the heart as the sight of her, like a rain of nectar."
Then she looked at the King with lotus-petal eyes like love that had been inspired at that very time. Afflicted by love at once she was led by her friends, who supported her with difficulty, to her abode, faded like a cluster of
315 305. Five gaits were recognized. See I, n. 304.
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