Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 4

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

Page 93

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CHAPTER SIX of Malli. “If her face is raised, let the moon depart vanquished by it; if there is light from her body, enough of emeralds -2; if there is a stream of her loveliness, there is no need of the water of the Jābnavī; if there is her beauty of form, do not speak of goddesses. Your Majesty, men's eyes are useless if she is not seen by them. What use are hansas that do not see at all the blooming lotus-bed?" Because of affection from the former birth, King Candracchāya sent his chief-messenger to Kumbha to ask Malli in marriage.
Pūraņa (87-96) Now Purana's soul fell from Vaijayanta and became a king, named Rukmin, in Śrāvastī. By his wife Dhāraņi he had a daughter Subāhu, endowed with remarkable beauty like a serpent-maiden. Because of the king's affection, he had a special bathing ceremony 48 'made carefully by her attendants in the four months' (rainy season). One day when she had been bathed especially by her attendants and had put on divine ornaments, she went to pay her respects to her father. Her father seated her on his lap and said to the eunuch, "Has such a bathingceremony of a girl been seen anywhere?” He replied: “When I went at your command to Mithilā, I saw a better one on the birthday of Malli, the daughter of Kumbha. Her beauty, my lord, whose equal has not been seen, is incomprehensible even when described, but my word must be taken for it. After I have seen this jewel of a woman, never seen before, my tongue has taken a vow of silence in describing other women. Compared with her, other women are faded like left-over flowers. What value have mango-shoots compared with the shoot of a wishingtree?"
42 83. See I, n. 213 on color.
48 89. This elaborate bath is described in Jõātā. 71 (p. 140, AS ed.). An ornamental bath-house is built and the princess bathed by attendants and gorgeously dressed and ornamented.