A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s6.58

v3.c35.s6.58

A noteworthy exception, however, is King Agni-varṇa, who has been described in canto XIX. This ruler devotes only a little of his time to the affairs of the state that he has entrusted to his ministers, whilst he wholly enjoys his youth in the company of women. Day and night he wastes his time in lust and sexual pleasures, without troubling in the least in the interest of his subjects. When they want to see him, he shows them his arm, having stretched it through a window of the palace. Like a butterfly he flies from flower to flower. He runs unsatiably after sexual pleasure. He considers the moment in which he does not rejoice the company of women as lost¹. Due to his licentious character he loses his health. Consumption brings his life to a premature end before a son is born to him. But his first queen is then pregnant and the ministers allow her to be consecrated as Her Majesty. The heat of tears that the widow sheds at the death of her husband is cooled with the coronation-water poured over her head from the spouts of golden jars, and she carries on the administration on behalf of her unborn child, concealed in her womb, like a corn-seed in the womb of the earth, and whose birth is anxiously awaited by the people.