A Mine of Faults

10

i. e., of virginity.

11

i. e., the God of Love.

12

v. the Kumára Sambhawa, for a full account of Párwati's wooing.

13

Dusk and Dawn.

14

The special duty of a king, according to the old Hindoo sages, is to hunger and thirst after earth, like Ovid's Eresichthon.

15

The monsoon which travels N.E.

16

One of the heroes in the Mahabhárata.

17

The preceptor of the gods; as we should say, a Solon.

18

i. e., Maheshwara.

19

i. e., Spring. Káma and Madhu – Love and Spring – are sworn friends in Hindoo mythology: an obvious poetical allegory, like the ver and Venus of the old Romans.

20

i. e., women.

21

An astrological term, which in modern Marathi, well known to the god, means a marriage.

22

A spring month, our April, devoted especially to marriages.

23

There is no English equivalent for this term. A guru is the spiritual guide of the Hindoo family: a kind of father confessor.

24

A woman who goes to meet her lover of her own accord.

25

The deception of Yogeshwara was all the more likely to deceive the King, in that it was based on Hindoo traditional maxims. Manu says: [vii. 147] "Let the King, for secret council, ascend to a mountain-top, or a lofty terrace, or repair to some lone wood, where there are not even any talking birds."

26

Manmatha: the God of Love, the Churner of the Soul.

27

The God of the Wind.

28

i. e., Love.

29

i. e., Love.

30

i. e., they all lack Maheshwara's third eye, which consumed Love's body with a fiery glance, when the audacious little deity dared to inspire the Great God himself with passion for Párwatí as she stood before him.

31

The English reader should bear in mind, that, in Sanskrit, recollection and love are often, as here, denoted by the same word.

32

Nothing in India is so delightful as the grace with which the women, even the oldest and the ugliest, handle that part of their garment that serves them for a veil. It is an everlasting beauty to see them, as they walk along the street, quietly drawing it around them: a thing lost among us altogether, like its motive.

33

There is a play on the word, which means also a woman.

34

This is the swayamwara, or self-choice of a bridegroom, everywhere exemplified in old Hindoo tales.