A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s8.69

v3.c35.s8.69

A Yakṣa, i.e. a class of celestial beings who are in the service of the god Kubera, had offended his master by some dereliction in the discharge of his duty, and for this his lord banished him for a year. He is obliged to leave his home and wife and to wander in the Rāma-hill in the south. In the eighth month of his banishment, just in the beginning of the rainy season, he sees a thundering cloud, that is moving from the south towards his homeland that was in the north; then he implores the cloud to convey his message to his aggrieved wife separated from him. He accurately describes to the cloud the path that he will have to traverse to reach his home in the Kailāsa hill, where in the city of Alakā is situated his castle, in which his wife is sorrowing all alone. This offers the poet a great opportunity to describe nature in a splendid manner. With particular affection he tarries when he describes his own native town Ujjayinī and Alakā, the city of the Yakṣas. The poet throughout fills our mind with wonder with his forceful pictures and similes. The black cloud spreads along the stream that resembles the pearl-band of the earth, in the middle of which shines forth a black saphire. The Kailāsa, with its snow-covered peaks resembling water-lilies, rises up in the sky and looks every night like the thundering laughter of Śiva¹. The city of Alakā, that is situated by the side of the Kailāsa hill, down which flows the river Gaṅgā, resembles a damsel lying in the lap of her lover (the hill, with her garment (the Gaṅgā) hanging down. The mansions surrounded by the clouds in the rainy season are comparable with a woman’s dark hairs interwoven with a net of pearls. After the Yakṣa has