Vajjalaggam

Author(s): M V Patwardhan
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society

Page 401

3336
VAJJĀLAGGAM
[471
to his persuasions and) prove to be unchaste at the very out-set, "what admiration for my virtue will he continue to have, as before?
471) If, oh my charming (fair-bodied) friend, he is being described (praised) (by you every day in front of me as a noble man-(I have to say that) noble (magnanimous) men do not even so much as cast a glance at the wives of others.
50. The Section on Unchaste Women 472) There is an arbour in the neighbourhood and also a hidden temple crowded with many youths. Ob daughter (damsel), do not weep because your husband is an old man. You have been given in marriage (you have been married) into a nice village !
573) Do not weep with face cast down because the paddyfields are whitening (with maturation of the grains) (and will be shortly harvested, so that you will have no secret place to carry on your illicit love with your paramour). Here are the hempgardens (enclosures) (that have grown up quite tall), looking like actors, whose faces are adorned (smeared) with yellow pigment.
474) To the east there are hemp-fields; to the west there are Asoka groves (or cane-groves); to the south there is a cluster of Vața (banian) trees. Oh daughter, such a village is not secured without special merit (or good luck)!
475) Behold this great wonder, namely the deed done (or subterfuge employed) by the wife of the person blind in one eye! (She was having amorous dalliance with her paramour, and just then her one-eyed husband returned home. Then she greeted her husband, fondled and caressed him.) Kissing slowly (ag) the (other) eye of her husband (or pretending to kiss passionately (a vy) the normal eye of her husband), she enabled her paramour to escape quickly unnoticed by her husband).
476) The village abounds in youthful fellows; the spring season is on (has set in); youthful age is in full swing (she is in the prime of youthful age); her husband is an old man; old (highly