Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.7

v2.c11.7

of the self, cleansed. Then the sun god deemed the grateful Saṃvaraṇa, learned in the law, with no peer on earth in beauty, a husband worthy of Tapaī. Now he willed to give this maid as wife to Saṃvaraṇa, best of the shepherds of earth, the man of renowned noble blood. For as, in the sky, the beaming one casts brightness abroad through his fiery glow, so on earth was Saṃvaraṇa full of light.¹ And as the knowers of the holy knowledge worship the rising sun, so did those among creatures that were younger brothers of the Brahmans² worship Saṃvaraṇa. The prince for his friends outdid the moon in sweetness, and for his foes outdid the sun in fiery strength.³ Since the lord of the earth had such gifts and his way of life was thus, so he of the glowing light resolved of himself to give him ‘the shining one’ (Tapaī). One day the glorious, boundlessly brave king was roving, as he hunted, through the mountain forest.⁴ While the king was busied hunting, his incomparable steed died in the mountains, overcome with hunger and thirst. Robbed of his horse by death, the prince was wandering afoot in the mountains, and then he saw a great-eyed maiden, without her like in the world. When the destroyer of the foeman’s army, the lonely one, met the lonely maid, he, the tiger among commanders of men, stood there, gazing with unmoving eyes. For the ruler of men held her to be Lakshmī for her loveliness, and then again he held her to be the shining bright one of the daystar come down thither, like unto the sun’s glowing beam in her wondrous splendour and dazzling light, like unto the moon’s sickle in her friendliness and sweet softness. For on the mountain-ridge where she stood she shone and gleamed like a golden statue. Through her beauty and her garb, because of her extraordinary splendour, that mountain with its trees, bushes, and creepers was turned as though into gold.¹ When the king had seen her, he despised the women in all the worlds, and believed that now only he had found profit of his eyes. All the loveliness that he had seen since his birth he deemed as below hers in rank. His heart and eye were fettered by her with the bonds made by her charms, and so he did not stir from that spot, and knew of nought. ‘Of a surety the Maker has whirled the whole world into being with gods, spirits, and mankind, and so brought the fair shape of this great-eyed one to life.’ So then King Saṃvaraṇa held the maid, for the perfection of the treasures of her beauty, to be without compare in the world. And so soon as the man of glorious nobility of birth had seen the glorious one, he fell in his soul into anguished care, tortured by the arrow of the god of love. Burning with the hot fever of passion, the undismayed one to her dismayed, to the heart-entangler, said: ‘Who art thou, and whose, thou lovely one with thighs like banana-stems, and wherefore art thou found here? And how comes it that thou roamest alone in the forest empty of mankind, thou of the bright smile? For thou art in every limb without a fault; and decked with every ornament, thou art as the beauty itself that is sought in these ornaments. I hold thee to be no goddess and no Asura woman, no Yaksha nor Rākshasa maid, for no snake fay, no Gandharva woman, and no human beauty.² For whatever glorious women I may have seen or heard of, thou, to my mind, art like none of them, thou mazed allurer. Thou of the lovely countenance, so soon only as I set sight on thy face with its lotus-leaf eyes, which is more