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raising a weapon of Smara; pretending to talk with her women friends. One, impassioned, sang composition of erotic episodes, charming with the gandhāragrāma,848 rich with transformations of mouth and eye. A beautiful girl talked about the stories of the kamaśāstra 844 again and again, devoted to the topic of erotic sport experienced by herself. Another drew postures invented by passion, conforming with the humor of temperaments, the bilious humor,845 et cetera. One asked for talk; another for a touch of the hand; another for a favor of a glance; another for an embrace. So these fictitious goddesses practiced thus many kinds of the arts until dawn. Then the two queens dispersed these fictitious forms that had been useless against the king like blows of a chisel on adamant. Remorseful, the queens of Iśāna begged forgiveness of Megharatha, bowed to him, and went to their own abode.
The king, delighted, completed his pratima and fast and, recalling again and again the events of the night, reached extreme desire for emancipation. When the chiefqueen, Priyamitrā, saw her husband in such a condition, she also attained desire for emancipation. For good wives follow the path of the husband. Then one day Arhat Ghanaratha came there in his wandering and stopped (in a samavasaraṇa) in the north-east. Agents reported to the king the Master's arrival. He gave them a gratuity and went with his younger brother to the Lord. The Lord delivered a sermon in a speech penetrating for a yojana, conforming to every dialect, with grāmarāgas. At the end of the sermon the king bowed to the Jina and said: "You are zealous in protecting everyone. Lord, protect me. You know everything. You are the benefactor of everyone, Lord of the World. Nevertheless, I make a request. Who is not eager for his own benefit, Master?
CHAPTER FOUR
848 329. See I, n. 79. 330. Ars amatoria.
844
845 331. Its quality is heat.
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