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Here then begins Book I, called "The Loss of Friends." The first verse runs:

And this is how it happened.

In the southern country was a city called Maidens' Delight. It rivaled the city of heaven's King, so abounding in every urban excellence as to form the central jewel of Earth's diadem. Its contour was like that of Kailasa Peak. Its gates and palaces were stocked with machines, missile weapons, and chariots in great variety. Its central portal, massive as Indrakila Mountain, was fitted with bolt and bar, panel and arch, all formidable, impressive, solid. Its numerous temples lifted their firm bulk near spacious squares and crossings. It wore a moat-girdled zone of walls that recalled the high-uplifted Himalayas.

In this city lived a merchant named Increase. He possessed a heap of numerous virtues, and a heap of money, a result of the accumulation of merit in earlier lives.