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SANATKUMĀRACAKRICARITRA
183
Urged by him in this way, your friend married the eight, who were like Sris of the directions, with proper rites at that very time. With the marriage string tied on (his wrist), he went to sleep in the pleasure-house with them; and, occupying a jeweled couch, he experienced the pleasure of sleep. Instantly Asitāksa lifted him up, when he was overcome by sleep, and threw him down somewhere else. A trick is stronger than the strong even. At the end of his sleep, your friend, seeing himself with the marriage-string on the ground, alone in the forest, thought, 'What has happened?' Wandering again in the forest, alone as before, he saw a seven-storied lofty palace. 'Is this a magic display by some sorcerer?' With these reflections, Aryaputra went to the palace. He heard there a young woman crying in a pitiful tone like an osprey, which made even the forest weep. Aryaputra, a hero in compassion, mounted to the palace's seventh floor which presented the appearance of a palace of a constellation. Your friend saw there a maiden whose eyes were full of tears, miserable, her face bent down, her body fair with beauty and grace, saying again and again, 'O Sanatkumāra, belonging to the Kuru race, may you, and no one else, be my husband in another birth, at least.
Doubtful at the thought, Who is she to me?' from hearing his own name, he went before her, like a wished-for divinity in person, and said: 'Fair lady, who is Sanatkumāra ? Who are you? Why have you come here? What is your trouble because of which you weep, recalling him?' So addressed by him, the girl experienced joy against her will and spoke in a sweet voice as if raining nectar:
'I am the daughter, Sunandā by name, of King Surāṣtra, lord of Sãketapura, and his queen, Candrayaśas. Sanatkumāra, by whose beauty Manmatha is humiliated, is the son of King Aśvasena, the sun to the sky of the Kuru line. He, long-armed, is my husband merely in wish, since I was given to him by my parents with the
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