Verse 15

¹⁵I do indeed want to marry, and your daughter has not been promised elsewhere. Ours would be a fitting match, by the first of the rules of marriage. ¹⁶God among men, let that desire of your daughter's, declared in the rule of the tradition, come about. Who would not hold your girl in regard, who by her own loveliness seems to put Sri herself out of countenance? ¹⁷When she was playing on the roof of the palace, her ankles ringing and lovely, her eyes swimming after the ball, Visvavasu saw her and fell out of his own flying chariot with his mind gone. ¹⁸She is the mark on the brow of all women, unseen by those who have not served the feet of Sri, Manu's own girl and the sister of him whose place is high; and she asks for this and comes of herself. What man of sense would not agree?

¹⁹So I shall take that good woman under an agreement, until she carries the seed of my own self. After that I hold in high regard those dharmas in which nothing is harmed, chief among them the way of the highest swans, told by the white one. ²⁰He from whom this world of many colours came to be, in whom it will come to its end and in whom it stands, the lord of the lords of creatures, the Bhagavan who has no end: he is my highest measure. ²¹Fierce archer, he said only this much and then fell silent, holding in his mind the one whose navel is a lotus. And Devahuti's heart was drawn to that face made lovely by its smile.