A History of Assam c26.s1.23

c26.s1.23

(Second Plate: obverse: line 28: Prose.) In his capital, the heat (of the weather) was relieved by the copious showers of ruttish water flowing from the temples of his troops of lusty (war-) elephants which had been presented to him by hundreds of kings conquered by the power of his arms entwined in clusters of flashes of his sharp sword. Though (that capital) was crowded with a dense forest, as it were, of arms of his brave soldiers who were hankering after the plunder of the camps of all his enemies, yet was it fit to be inhabited by wealthy people (merchants). (In it) the disk of the sun was hid (from view) by the thousands of plastered turrets which are rendered still whiter by the nectar-like smiles of the love-drunk fair damsels (standing on them). It was frequented by many hundreds of well-to-do people,³ just as a forest planted on the heights of the Malaya mountains (is frequented) by snakes. It is adorned by learned men, religious preceptors and poets who have made it their place of resort, just as the sky is adorned by Mercury, Jupiter and Venus.¹ It resembles the summit of mount Kailāsa in being the residence of the Parameçvara (i.e., supreme ruler, or Çiva, the supreme God), and in being inhabited by a Vitteça (i.e., a master of wealth, or Kuvera the God of wealth). Like the cloth which protects the king's broad chest, its boundaries were encompassed by a rampart, furnished with a fence strong like that used for the game-birds of the Çakas, fit to cause chagrin to the king of Gurjara, to give fever to the heads of the untameable elephants of the chief of Gauda, to act like bitumen in the earth to the lord of Kerala, to strike awe into the Bāhikas and Tāikas, to cause discomfiture (lit., pulmonary consumption) to the master of the Deccan country; and generally to serve for the purpose of discomfiting the (king's) enemies. It is rendered beautiful by the river Lauhitya which gives relief to the fair damsels, that after the exertion of sexual enjoyment ascend to the retirement of their stuccoed turrets, by the spray of its current gently wafted up by the breeze charmingly resonant with the prattle of the flocks of love-drunk females of the Kala-hamsa ducks: