The Life of Ballālasena 2.14

Vyāsa said: / Praiseworthy is a woman with all limbs beautiful, walking like an intoxicated elephant, / who has heavy thighs and hips, and eyes like a blackbuck deer,

With very dark hair, slender limbs, body hairless, captivating, / with feet touching the earth evenly, and likewise close-set breasts,

A navel turning clockwise, the secret part like an aśvattha leaf, / ankles hidden, navel measured by a thumb at the middle,

With cheeks resembling madhūka blossoms, not veinous, not hairy, / not frowning with joined eyebrows, her husband being her life-breath, dear to her husband.

A young girl delights in toys given at the proper time and in eating divine fruits; / a young woman [delights] in clothes, ornaments, embraces, and the like.

A mature woman of middle age would rejoice in skills in erotic play; / an old woman, however, is pleased with sweet conversations and with respect.

Up to sixteen years she is a girl; up to thirty she has blooming youth; / up to fifty-five she is mature; after that a woman is old.

Women are entirely subject to desire; for their sake is the gathering of jewels. / They should be enjoyed, yet not excessively indulged, by a king who desires sensual pleasure.

With a woman sixteen years of age, a wise man of twenty-four years / should make an effort, desiring superior pleasure.

Thus, both possessing complete bodily vigor, they produce an excellent son, / endowed with all senses, strong, and living a hundred years.

In summer and autumn, a girl is considered wholesome for a sensualist; / a young woman in the cold season; a mature woman in the rains and spring.

A girl, being enjoyed constantly, always increases strength; / a young woman diminishes vigor; a mature woman brings on old age.

Fresh meat, śāli rice, intercourse with a young girl, clarified butter, / milk, and bathing in hot water—these six immediately bestow vital breath.

The passionate man, having been made virile by vigor, should indulge at will in winter; / indeed, at the approach of the cold season, he should indulge in sexual union to his heart's content.

In the cold [season], at night; in summer, by day; and in spring, by day and night; / in the rainy season, when the clouds roar; in the autumn season, he should indulge when filled with desire.

Desiring union, having first excited [her] with embraces and the like, / strengthened by aphrodisiacs, he should approach the woman properly.

A daily bath with hot water, drinking milk, young women, / [and] very unctuous food in small quantity: this, O kings, is wholesome for you.

Clarified butter becomes fragrant through the addition of wood apple powder, / as well as curd, blood, and barley cast into milk.

Such would be the preparation of food. The freeing from odor is explained: / cleansing, proper rinsing, and likewise purging,

steeping, boiling, waking, fumigating, / and scenting: these are declared to be the eightfold processes.

Water made with shoots of wood apple, bilva, jambu, mango, and oleander— / the substance that is cleansed with it is cleansing.

In the absence of these, cleansing would be done with musk water. / Nakha, kuṣṭha, ghana, māṃsī, spṛkkā, śaileya, jala,

likewise saffron, lac, sandalwood, agallochum, nīrada, / sarala pine, devakāṣṭha, camphor along with priyaṅgu,

hrībera, kunduruka resin, guggulu, and turpentine / along with sal tree resin: these are the twenty-one incense ingredients.

From this group of twenty-one incense ingredients, taking as one wishes / two ingredients each, one should combine them with portions of sal resin;

combining them with nakha, oil-cake, and sandalwood, and likewise with honey— / incense mixtures thus made according to wish become effective here.

Cinnamon bark, nāḍī, nutmeg, oil, saffron, granthiparṇa, / śaileya, tagara, priyaṅgu, cardamoms, and camphor,

māṃsī, murā, and kuṣṭha: these should be designated as bath ingredients. / Taking any three ingredients at will from these, / a bath combined with musk should be prepared, increasing passion.

With equal parts of cinnamon bark, murā, and spikenard, combined with half a part of vāsaka, / the bath becomes scented like a blue lotus; mixed with oil, it acts like saffron.

Combined with half a part of tagara, it smells fragrant like the jasmine flower; / with vāsaka, it becomes delightful, with a fragrance equal to bakula.

Adding madder, tagara, cardamom, cinnamon bark, vyāghranakha, nakha, / and fragrant leaf, an auspicious fragrant oil is produced.

Oil from sesame scented with jasmine flowers is beloved by women. / Oil pressed in an oil mill from sesame seeds scented with flowers / will surely become similar in fragrance to the flower through perfuming.

Cardamom, cloves, kakkola, nutmeg, and camphor, / along with mace, are individual mouth-perfumers.

Camphor, saffron, priyaṅgu, musk, hareṇuka, / kakkola, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, mace,

cinnamon bark, cardamom seeds, mustā, latākastūrī, / the flower-buds of clove, and fruits and leaves born of jasmine;

taking kuṭaka fruit, one should prepare them in portions of a karṣa. / In their powder, one should place an extract of khadira, a fourth part scented;

with mango juice, auspicious pills should be made from this. / Placed in the mouth, these fragrant [pills] destroy diseases of the mouth.

Betel nut thoroughly washed with water of the five shoots / [and] perfumed according to ability with the pill ingredients is a mouth-perfumer.

Pungent bark perfumed with cow urine for three days, / and prepared just like betel nut, brings about fragrance of the mouth.

Equal parts of cinnamon bark and harītakī combined with half a part of camphor / shine forth like betel leaf, a delightful mouth-perfumer.

Thus the lord of the earth should always maintain the protection of women; / and he should never trust them, especially the mother of his son.

Thus ends the fourteenth chapter, entitled 'The Description of the Marks of Women, etc.', in the Vyāsapurāṇa of the Vallālacarita.

Now begins the fifteenth chapter.