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SANATKUMĀRACAKRICARITRA
173
from being seen, he stole the eyes and minds of gazelleeyed women by his incomparable beauty. He drank in grammar with its divisions, the mother of complete knowledge, which was poured from his guru's mouth, as easily as a sip of water. He grasped completely military science and statecraft, pillars of the palace of sovereignty, like other pillars in the form of arms for himself. He acquired all the other arts also with ease; and gradually grew up like a spotless moon (kalānidhi). His body was forty-one and a half bows tall, and he attained youth from childhood like heaven from the world of mortals.
His horse carries him into the forest (85-95) He had a very intimate friend, the son of Kālindi and Sūra, named Mahendrasinha, whose strength was celebrated. One day when spring had come, he went to the garden Makaranda with Kälindi's son from a desire to play. There Sanatkumāra amused himself with his friend in various sports, like a young god in Nandana. Then the king's stud-master sent horses as gifts, which were skilled in five gaits, 282 marked with all the marks. He gave Sanatkumāra one horse, Jaladhikallola (Ocean-wave) by name, unsteady as a wave. The prince abandoned his play and mounted the horse. Always horses and elephants are of great interest to princes. Taking the whip in one hand and the bridle in the other, with a light seat in the saddle, he started the horse by (pressure of) his thighs. It ran forward rapidly, not touching the earth with its feet, as it were, going rather in the air, as if to see the horses of the sun. Whenever the prince pulled the horse with the bridle, he ran all the more, as he had inverted training. In a moment the horse left the princes 288 on horseback even
282 88. See I, n. 304.
238 94. There has been no mention of any other companions except Mahendrasinha, but in the Uttar. version Sanatkumāra was accompanied by other princes to the garden. They all mounted horses at the same time.
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