Arjuna and the Hunter 8
English (machine translation) 8
- Language
- English
8.1
Then the celestial women, wishing to sport in the groves,
left the city of the sky-dwellers—
radiant with mansions made by their own magic,
blazing with jewels, eternal, with archways curved like Indra's bow.
8.2
Entering the forest together with the sky-dwellers,
each in their own couples, illuminating the mountain creepers with their radiance,
those lotus-eyed damsels took on
the singular appearance of flashes of lightning.
8.3
Free from the heaviness of breasts round and large,
accompanied by the tinkling sound of their ornaments,
walking upon the earth after traveling through the sky
brought immense delight to the slender-waisted maidens.
8.4
Leaving behind the trees that bore dense blossoms, / readily gathered by hand, the heavenly beauties strode ahead; / for those who possess desire long for ever-greater virtues.
8.5
The denizens of the woods courted the slender creeper-arms / of the playful women—sprouts of hands reddened with lac, / bearing clusters of flashing fingernail-rays, / captivating with the fragrance of ointments.
8.6
Its clusters drunk by bees, / with its young leaves trembling, / the aśoka branch seemed to the women to mimic / a hand trembling and a lip fiercely bitten [in passion].
8.7
“Waving your hands that look like fresh sprouts, / proud girl, do not labor in vain! / Having approached you with suspicion that you are a wish-fulfilling vine, / how could that swarm of bees take fright?”
8.8
“Cast off your anger! Follow your beloved! / Lest your fickle heart repent later!” / Thus before one woman wishing to approach her lover, / her clever friends pleaded with her.
8.9
The wives of the ocean in the form of bowers were adorned / with lofty bank-regions, lovely as their own hips, / gleaming with the white silk of kāśa grass, / girdled by flocks of calling cranes.
8.10
Shattered by falling from afar, / scattered everywhere from the torrent, / cool like the beloved’s lap, gleaming like pure pearls, / water droplets were like the smiles of the forest.
8.11
The creeping vines with bowing forms, / with expanding flower-eyes whose centers were speckled by motionless bee-collyrium, / seemed to gaze upon the female companions / whose devotion was magnified by love.
8.12
The high plateaus captivated the minds of the King of the Gods’ women / as they arrived; and so did the sandal trees, / endowed with a dark lustre from the rubs of elephants' cheeks / flushed red with rut.
8.13
Though within their own reach, lured by the flowers of the trees / which stole their hearts, the women lovingly / granted pleasure to the sky-farers / who desired to serve them.
8.14
As her beloved reached high to offer flowers, / he called her by a rival's name; / the proud woman said nothing, but with eyes brimming with tears / merely scratched the earth with her toe.
8.15
As her lover addressed her, another woman raised her face, / her gaze fixed [on him]; with her bodice loosened and undone, / she did not adjust her slipping garment, / nor did she realize in vain that the sprout of her hand was among the flowers.
8.16
Playfully fastening an ear-ornament of blossoms / connected with vine-flower decorations, / a lovely woman with swelling hips pressed against a lover with the crush of her breasts / and pushed him away with her plump waist.
8.17
[Another was exhausted] by the weight of her hips whose waist-knot was loose, / by her chest adorned with breasts from which the silk garment was slipping, / by a belly whose folds had disappeared to reveal a line of hairs, / panting from having reached out [for flowers].
8.18
A certain woman, with hanging, disheveled tresses of hair, / having revealed her armpit / under the pretext of reaching for tree blossoms, / deliberately stole the heart of her heart’s lord.
8.19
Unable to blow away the pollen / of flowers from her eyes with the breath of his mouth, / her lover was struck upon the chest with her breast / by a certain agitated woman with high, plump bosom.
8.20
“Take these, not those”—as the flower-tipped sprouts / were thus gently picked according to their charm, / the beauty of the forest, as if finding the trees devoid of essence, / established her abode among the women.
8.21
The women seemed to take on the exalted bodily qualities / of the trees: the fresh sprout of hands red as broken coral, / plump breasts whitened by pollen, / fragrant with the scent of flowers.
8.22
With excellent thighs plump as an elephant's trunk, / their feet, long exhausted, beautiful as fresh sprouts, / were unable to walk even upon level ground, / stumbling at every step as if from intoxication.
8.23
Endowed with the enchanting splendor of raised hips, / acquired from the spreading rays of girdle-jewels, / their hips rested, having surpassed the brilliance of fresh sandbanks / by weight heightened by fatigue.
8.24
Their bellies, endowed with beauty near the knot of their lower garments / by navels delicate as expanding lotus buds, / bore a bent posture at the waist with lines of folds, / owing to the excessive burden of their breasts.
8.25
Possessing a radiance equal to lotuses adorned with frost / whose lines of petals are not fully expanded, / their faces, sprinkled all over with drops of sweat, / had their eyes half-opened.
8.26
As the celestial women went forth along the mountain slope path, / slow from heavy perspiration, / wonder filled the sky-farers who gazed at them, / as though a novel reverence entered their vision.
8.27
Then the River of the Gods, whose lotuses were shaken by leaping fish, / whose mass of waves broke on mud-free banks, / echoing with the calls of royal swans, / seemed to summon the women to plunge into her waters.
8.28
Dispersing the oppressive heat, blowing softly, / wiping the lotuses, having gathered spray, / the breeze wandering amidst the series of waves / offered, as it were, a supporting hand to the playful women.
8.29
With graceful gaits they surpassed the stately walk of the royal swan, / with their hips bearing heavy waists they surpassed the sandbank, / and with their long-eyed faces they surpassed the lotuses— / thus the celestial women displaced all claims to equality.
8.30
The waters, whose rows of fish swimming at the edge were scattered, / plunged into first by the companions of Indra, / were at first entered with some hesitation and fear / by the divine beauties.
8.31
As soon as the waters were plunged into by the charming women, / whose plump thighs moved with effort, / the broke-up mass of waves spread out, / tossing the cranes onto the banks.
8.32
Driven against the banks, its waves broken / by the chests of the sky-dwellers dense as rock / and by the broad swells of the women’s breasts, / the water grew turbid, as if in anger.
8.33
With the women’s hair shaken, their garlands tossed about, / and their sandal-paste washed away, / the waves trembled repeatedly, as if terrified / at having committed an offense through excessive forwardness.
8.34
The nail-marks, agitating the minds of rivals, / which had been concealed by playful adornment, / were displayed boastfully by the women under another guise, / as if they were remnants of saffron that had been washed away.
8.35
“Is this a lotus petal on which a bee has settled, / or the two eyes of a woman whose glance is darting? / Is this hair, or a silent and motionless swarm of bees / resting on a curved row of eyelashes?”
8.36
“Is this a face revealing teeth-filaments in an open smile, / or is this an unfolding lotus?” / Thus did the women, only after a long time, recognize / their companion hiding in the lotus bed.
8.37
Strung together by her beloved in the presence of her rival / and placed upon her chest with plump breasts, / a certain woman would not cast off the garland, though dirtied by water; / for virtues reside in love, not in the object.
8.38
The collyrium that was applied by the lovely women / undoubtedly to check the redness at the corners [of their eyes]— / even when that was washed away by the water, / the reddish tinge did not banish the whiteness nor the charm of their eyes.
8.39
Seeing the lovely women who bore beauty even with their leaf-paintings erased, their lower lips devoid of red lac,
and their eyes stripped of collyrium, the sky-dwellers realised that the ornament was adorned by their very bodies.
8.40
Not so much earlier, when care was taken for ornaments out of love for their beloveds,
did the wanton women burn the eyes of their rivals as they did when wet with water, through the splendour of fingernail marks.
8.41
Fair-faced and timid among the lotuses, their trembling pearl necklaces [lost] amid the tossing rows of foam,
exceedingly fair with saffron washed away, they could not attain superiority against the waves.
8.42
When the water of the pool, struck by the dispersed hands of the women, emitted a sound deep as a drum-beat,
with rhythmic breasts keeping time, a delightful, trembling dance, as it were, was repeatedly undertaken.
8.43
With its water adorned by smiling faces reflected in it, mocking the white lotuses with their beauty,
the Gaṅgā, favoured by the women of Indra, attained the fulfilment of its purity.
8.44
With their thighs struck by darting fish, their eyes trembling in terror,
and their sprout-like hands trembling, the heavenly women became worth seeing even to their female friends.
8.45
Embracing her lover as if in fear when struck by a fish in the water, a proud woman delighted him with joy;
women captivate the heart with affectionate arts prompted by genuine love, even when feigned.
8.46
Their margins entirely hidden by wide-spreading ringlets tossed about by immersion in the water,
the faces of the young women attained likeness to lotuses veiled by swarms of bees.
8.47
Shaking her hands shaped like fresh sprouts, pretending to be startled in the deep water,
a proud woman attained an embrace with her beloved's body, unblemished by forwardness and beyond reproach from her friends.
8.48
Warded off playfully by the hand-splashed water of their lovers, their breasts trembling with intensified sighs,
the sprout-like tips of their hands shaken with graceful agitation, the wanton women lived up to their name.
8.49
Disregarding firmness, the face of the slender-browed woman with closing eyes, warded off by water splashed from the hands,
as she was respectfully appeased by her lover, seemed to rob the beauty from the face of her co-wife.
8.50
When the hand bearing water was held by her lover with a smile, the bride's mind moistened with passion,
the girdle, made thick by water, held up her garment whose knot had slipped off, like a female friend.
8.51
A sidelong glance adorned the two eyes devoid of collyrium; a tremor adorned the sprout-like lower lip devoid of lac;
and the religious mark with three folds adorned its seat on the body of the slender-browed woman, though devoid of a forehead mark.
8.52
With closing, squinting eyes, their limbs trembling near their lovers,
with breasts heaving from sighs as they submerged: did fatigue or did desire spread over them?
8.53
Sprinkled by her beloved after her rival, a certain woman grew angry and was not pacified by reassurances;
for in the heart of one whose love is deep-rooted, resentment somehow grows stronger at conciliation.
8.54
Having thus disported, the water, cast up by women endowed with plump breasts and wide hips,
surpassing the shore with surges of rising waves, rushed forward as if driven by longing.
8.55
Having driven pairs of cakravāka birds to other shores, and having shaken the beauty of the lotus clusters,
those women, their pearl necklaces washed by the water of the heavenly river, shone like nights trembling with canopies of stars.
8.56
With its variation of hue imparted by the transferred sandal-paste, variegated by the rays of fallen gems from broken ornaments,
its waves forming wrinkles, the water of the river, enjoyed and abandoned by the heavenly women, bore the beauty of a bed.
8.57
Seeing the heavenly women bent on amorous sport, wearing colourful garments and ornaments,
the sun hung near the ocean, as if to set for their pleasure.
Commentaries (1)
- Ghaṇṭāpatha — Mallinātha Sūri, Sanskrit
Linked texts (1)
- Kirātārjunīya — Bhāravi, Sanskrit