The Slaying of Śiśupāla 13
English (machine translation) 13
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13.1
Hearing that he had crossed the Yamunā— / 'Son of asceticism' is not said of him now— / from the time he departed from his city, day and night, / the king had been constantly kept informed by reports.
13.2
Not containing himself within the great city, as it were, / through the joy born of the arrival of the lord of the Yadus, / that ruler of the earth then quickly set forth to meet him, / accompanied by his younger brothers.
13.3
When people's hearing was deafened / by the sounds of the drums of the Kuru host vigorously rolling, / the remaining part of the topic of their desired conversation / was spoken by speakers through gestures of the hand.
13.4
And on every side of the kings, leaving no space between, / fell the standard-bearers, their golden rims spinning rapidly, / with banner-cloths and dust from the earth resembling one another / as they were shaken by the swift wind.
13.5
Struck by the horses' hooves, the earth rapidly sounded / like paṇava-drums played upon by strokes of hands; / and peacocks danced, their soft cries delighted / by the deep roar of elephants like rainclouds.
13.6
Though the two armies of the Foe of Asuras and of the son of Pāṇḍu / united with preceding affection, / their tusked elephants instantly grew furious with one another; / for where is discernment in those whose minds are blinded by rut?
13.7
At the very sight of the king from afar, / as the king was eagerly wishing to descend from his chariot, / Hari himself descended first: / he enhances modesty through courtesy.
13.8
With his body, from which the long necklace was piling up in front on the ground, / the Primeval Person, though bowed down to by all worlds, / upholding his own dignity, / bowed down to the son of his father's sister.
13.9
Before his head, with its crown's rays coloring the pollen in front, / could touch the surface of the earth, / he was eagerly clasped in the cage of the king's arms / without regard for protocol.
13.10
The chest of the enemy of Mura, broad as a door-panel, / could not fit against the earth-ruler's chest upon his body; / nevertheless, spreading them wide, / he embraced him all around with his pair of long arms.
13.11
Surely Śrī, having gone to dwell constantly on the broad chest of the foe of Mura / and abandoned her lotus-seat, / now climbed up to his face out of fear / of being mercilessly crushed by the king of the Kurus.
13.12
Then, as the king kissed on the head the binder of the foes of the gods, / who was a dwarf through deceit [before] and now a dwarf through humility, / his hair was perfumed, as if by his own fame, / with flowers of the immortal tree won by valor.
13.13
Though the son of Vasudeva had loosened his embrace, / the vine-like body of the lord of the Kurus, / its hair-pores bristling with the feeling of bliss, / did not abandon the beauty of a cluster of blossoming kadamba flowers.
13.14
Delighted, with eyes wide open in joy, / he who was skilled in greeting people, having forcefully destroyed the assembly of the asuras, / properly honored the other earth-rulers / and his younger brothers in the fitting manner.
13.15
Meeting together, of equal majesty, solid as stone, / possessing very long arms like dense wings, / the rulers of the earth embraced the kings, / as mountains would embrace mountains after [being struck by] the thunderbolt.
13.16
With their waists kept far apart / by the weight of each other's breasts, high and hard as elephants' frontal globes, / and their broad cheeks blooming with delight, / the women of the Kukuras and Kauravas embraced one another.
13.17
Crowded with chariots, horses, foot-soldiers, and female elephants, / the two armies mingled together; / only the male elephants kept apart from afar: / for everything about the great transcends ordinary beings.
13.18
Requested by the king with the words 'Please mount', / Hari mounted the chariot, offering his hand to him whose banner bore an ape, / while his sprout-like hand was held by the son of Ilavilā, / just as Indra mounts a cloud.
13.19
And when the enemy of Mura, like the enemy of the three cities, / stood upon the chariot facing the city, / the lord of creatures, the very embodiment of dharma, / suffused with affection, himself took up the whip.
13.20
Then the son of the Wind slowly waved a chowrie / which bore the appearance of the moon's rays shimmering between thin cloud-meshes, / and looked like a great mass of foam of the ocean's lord.
13.21
Over the master of the worlds, who possessed the dark luster of a blooming kalāya-blossom, / the victorious one held a sunshade, white as a full moon, / surpassing the luster of a flock of swans above the waters of the Yamunā.
13.22
Standing between the son of the Wind and the son of Indra, / the lovely Discus-Bearer shone exceedingly, / like the moon assuming the astrological combination called durudharā, / produced by its position between two planets.
13.23
Just as restraint and self-control follow a master ascetic / who has subjugated his senses, who rules over the right and wrong paths of conduct, / so the two sons of the Dasras then followed him, / who was surrounded by the fortune of victory, like the sun and the wind.
13.24
Approaching the foe of the sons of Diti, / with their devotion manifested through modest reverence, / those chastisers of the ill-behaved conducted themselves meekly / as though approaching a preceptor.
13.25
When the two armies had thus become united, / like the waters of the daughter of the sun and the daughter of Jahnu, / drums, resounding in celestial chariots, / echoed loudly with the highest joy.
13.26
The foe of the sons of Danu beheld the city / whose dwellings were arranged outside on every side / for the kings who had arrived to attend the sacrifice of the king of the earth, / as though it were being besieged by royal armies.
13.27
Filling the spaces between the quarters with echoes, descending / toward the gateway of the city, that ocean of an army / shone like the heavenly Gangā’s flood of waters / facing toward the opening of a cavern of the Himalaya.
13.28
Having assumed multiple bodily forms on many occasions, / that Puruṣa then entered the city, which was divided by nine gateways, / together with the five sons of the king, / just as [the soul enters the body] with the five senses.
13.29
In that [city], men shone with bodies / displaying the splendour of the god of love unobserved by the eye of the Three-Eyed Lord; / and women indeed with faces that surpassed the moon / beyond the reach of consumption.
13.30
Summoned by the roll of kettle-drums / to behold the enemy of the foes of the gods, / the women of the city, hastening, disregarding every other task, / then rushed onto every street.
13.31
Seeing the women going along with half-finished adornments, / holding their slipping garments at their waistbands with their hands, / the rows of mansions on their walls seemed distinctly to produce loud laughter / through the echoes of the drums.
13.32
In their haste, the women ran forward, / with their pearl necklaces worn in place of their girdles, / their ear-ornaments placed upon their hair, / their pair of garments worn inside out, / and their ear-lotuses made into bracelets.
13.33
One woman, pulling away her foot / from the sprout-like hand of her maidservant out of impetuous passion, / made her path an earth mottled by a single footprint dyed with red lac, / as if she were the Mountain's Daughter transformed into half of Hara's form.
13.34
The women hurried out of their mansions, / agitating the girdles that rattled as they slipped over the curves of their broad hips, / their golden anklets jingling / as they stepped over lofty bridges of refined gold.
13.35
At the lattice of a golden palace, a woman's lotuses-face shone, / its eyes flashing with the desire to behold the conqueror of Mura, / like the orb of the moon situated within / a cavern opening of the Mountain of Sunrise.
13.36
With a woman who had climbed high upon her house, / the hem of whose garment was tossed by the wind, / lending it splendour as Mādhava approached, / that city appeared as though adorned with a banner.
13.37
In house after house, women showered the lover of the discus / with offerings of parched grains released from the lotus-buds of their two hands, / as if with heaps of pearls / set free from cracked oyster-shells.
13.38
Splendid as the moon free from frost, lotus-marked, / intoxicating the twice-born, arousing the god of love, / having propitiated the gods, he, Mādhava, / became a great festive season for the women for a long time.
13.39
Thinking, 'Out of fear of the daughter of the king of mountains, / this Three-Eyed Lord surely does not look at these women; / I am free of fear because of the god of love,' / he gazed for a moment upon the graceful women of the city.
13.40
He who sleeps upon the ocean, by whose vast belly / the worlds were swallowed at the close of an eon, / was again drunk in by a certain city-woman / with a single gaze unsteady with the agitation of passion.
13.41
With her dense breasts swelling excessively, / the tinkling of her conch-shell ornaments and bracelets sounding again and again, / a certain woman facing Kṛṣṇa quickly touched / the hollow of one ear with the tip of her finger.
13.42
Another, with a hand lovely as a pale-red lotus petal, / its sprout-like fingers repeatedly trembling, / accompanied by a shake of her head, summoned the foe of Madhu / with a secret meaning whose syllables were unspoken.
13.43
Covering her lovely face with one hand / possessing the beauty of a sprout placed beside a lotus, / another woman yawned, displaying the shining shoots of radiance / from her teeth emerging through the spaces between her trembling fingers.
13.44
With her sprout-like hand, / its fine line of body-hair intensified by the lustre of the black sapphire set in her bracelet, / another woman held her slipping garment, / her eyes refusing to miss a moment in gazing at Hari.
13.45
Her perspiration dried by the breeze of the fans of the wings of bees / lured by her own fragrance, / a certain woman, with an unblinking gaze fixed upon Śauri, / appeared like the presiding goddess of the city in bodily form.
13.46
'Hari goes toward our eyes while they are still thirsty,' / so lamented the slender-waisted women; / they did not know that even he who gazes upon him constantly / indeed never reaches satiety.
13.47
Paying no heed to returning to their homes, / the women stood for a moment as if fashioned in a painting, / having attained emptiness, as if waiting / for their minds that had departed with Acyuta.
13.48
With their slender bodies languid with passion, / heavy from having quickly drunk the flood of the nectar of Mādhava / in the hollow of their widely expanded eyes, / the fair-eyed women slowly made their way back to their homes.
13.49
Freed from dust in front by freshly sprinkled fragrant water, / their illusions of dust produced by dense incense-smoke, / with garments hanging from abundant aloft banners, / the streets of the city were then traversed by Hari.
13.50
He at once approached that assembly hall / which Maya, having brought gems and wood belonging to Vṛṣaparvan / from Lake Bindu, had constructed, / surpassing the splendour of the heavenly palaces.
13.51
Falling at night upon the luster of sky-scraping mansions / built of stones washed with gold, / the moon with cool rays seemed once more / to dwell for a moment within the womb of the ocean of milk.
13.52
The floors fashioned of rubies in the chambers, / their interiors made dark-green by the rays of dark sapphire gems, / bore the appearance of the waters with which the son of Jamadagni libated his ancestors, / with sparse moss floating on them.
13.53
Built of brilliant stones, united with the radiance / of the maker of night during the nights, / the rows of houses were traversed for a long time by people / guided by touching with their hands, as if in the dark.
13.54
In the mansions, by masses of black stone, at night, / the rays of the hare-marked moon, whose crime of ravishing the night-lotus bride was manifest, / were silently struck down out of indignation, / even though repeatedly trembling.
13.55
In that place, happy men, looking at the reflections / in the jeweled walls of the houses right in front of them, / found delight in their newly wedded beloved women, / even though those women turned their faces away from excess of bashfulness.
13.56
Among the heaps of emerald mansions, / people saw deer with their faces repeatedly bent down in desire for grass, / with the shoots of rays touching the tips of their tongues, / looking as if they had taken mouthfuls.
13.57
In its environs, trees, with their reflections / fallen onto the mirrors of water held in broad irrigation basins, / shone forth, as if possessing a cluster of roots / endowed with a mass of leaves.
13.58
Because of the presence of gems growing on the heads of lordly serpents, / sprouting lapis lazuli grounds burst forth, breathing anew at the roars of the towering clouds in its courtyards.
13.59
And where that lotus pond with hidden water—falling into which Suyodhana thought, ‘This is dry ground’— / became the occasion for the destruction of all kings, precipitated by the laughter of the son of the Wind.
13.60
Where, for fear of water on the sapphire floor, / garments were repeatedly pulled far up by people—ignored by others eager to laugh, their sweet splendour gleaming with flashing swords all around.
13.61
Then Hari and the son of Pāṇḍu descended from the chariot near the assembly hall, / their bodies radiant with spotless halos of light, gladdening the eyes, like the moon and Venus descending to the sky from the mountain of dawn.
13.62
When the king respectfully directed, ‘This way, this way!’, / he slowly entered that hall whose jewel-studded walls were imperceptible and whose door was hidden by rays of white stone.
13.63
He then saw there in the assembly the palace of the king, built with bricks of fresh gold, / which, with its mass of sky-touching gem-lustre, laughed at the dwellings even of the gods.
13.64
Bearing an impossible splendour—as if of the sun and the full moon shining simultaneously upon the peak of the sunrise mountain— / the king and Acyuta then sat down upon a spacious seat of lovely brilliance.
13.65
Through the joy of the Yadus, the royal family found delight in utter ease that severed all weariness, / just as a body scorched by summer finds ease in the wind, or the ocean's water in the moon.
13.66
Accompanied by flawless rhythm and tempo of instruments, keeping a tender, fresh song free from dissonance, / lovely women danced radiantly alongside graceful female dancers, exhibiting clear emotional and physical gestures.
13.67
And when Hari had arrived at the house, the king ordered an untimely festival throughout the whole city; / out of eager delight, the king indeed forgot that it was already a continuous festival.
13.68
Hari, knowing the names of all down to the children, inquired about the welfare of each kinfolk in turn; / even on attaining supreme fortune, a noble person never forgets anything out of pride.
13.69
Hard to attain in the mortal world, producing an emergence of aesthetic flavour, bearing step by step a freshness in its excess— / both the Lord of Śrī and that lord of the earth relished between themselves much nectar of mutual conversation.
Commentaries (2)
- Sarvaṅkaṣā — Mallinātha Sūri, Sanskrit
- Śiśupālavadhaṭīkā — Mallinātha, Sanskrit
Linked texts (1)
- Śiśupālavadha — Māgha, Sanskrit