Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/568

 daughter Madanasundarí, together with all his wealth, retaining only his kingdom.

And king Kanakavarsha, after he had remained there seven days, returned to his own city with his recently-married bride. And when he arrived with his beloved, giving joy to the world, like the moon with the moonlight, that city was full of rejoicing. Then that queen Madanasundarí was dearer than life to that king, though he had many wives, as Rukminí is to Vishnu. And the wedded couple remained fastened together by their eyes with lovely eyelashes, which were fixed on one another's faces, resembling the arrows of love. And in the meanwhile arrived the lion of spring, with a train of expanding filaments for mane, tearing to pieces the elephant of female coyness. And the garden made ready blossoming mango-plants, by way of bows for the god of Love, with rows of bees clinging to them by way of bowstring. And the wind from the Malaya mountain blew, swaying the love-kindled hearts of the wives of men travelling in foreign lands, as it swayed the suburban groves. And the sweetly-speaking cuckoos seemed to say to men, " The brimming of the streams, the flowers of the trees, the digits of the moon wane and return again, but not the youth of men.* Fling aside coyness and quarrelling, and sport with your beloved ones."

And at that time king Kanakavarsha went with all his wives to a spring-garden, to amuse himself. And he eclipsed the beauty of the asókas with the red robes of his attendants, and with the songs of his lovely ladies the song of the cuckoos and bees. There the king, though all his wives were with him, amused himself with Madanasundarí in picking flowers and other diversions. And after roaming there a long time, the king entered the Godávarí with his wives to bathe, and began the water-game. His ladies surpassed the lotuses with their faces, with their eyes the blue waterlilies, with their breasts the couples of Brahmany ducks, with their hips the sandbanks, and when they troubled the bosom of the stream, it showed frowns of anger in the form of curling waves. Then the mind of Kanakavarsha took pleasure in them, while they displayed the contours of their limbs in the splashing-game. And in the ardour of the game, he splashed one queen with water from his palms on her breast.

When Madanasundarí saw it, she was jealous, and got angry with him, and in an outburst of indignation said to him, " How long are you going to trouble the river?" And going out of the water, she took her other clothes and rushed off in a passion to her own palace, telling her ladies of that fault of her lover's. Then king Kanakavarsha, seeing her state of mind, stopped his water-game, and went off to her apartments. Even the parrots in the