Verse 24

¹⁷There are jackfruit and cluster fig, asvattha and plaksa and banyan and hingu, birches and healing herbs, areca and royal areca and rose-apple, ¹⁸date and hog-plum and mango and the rest, priyala and madhuka and ingudi; and it shines with other kinds of tree, and with bamboo and hollow reed. ¹⁹It is rich with thickets of white and blue and red water lilies and of hundred-petalled lotuses, and lovely with flocks of birds crooning softly over the lotus pools. ²⁰There are deer and monkeys, boars and lions, bears and porcupines, wild oxen and sarabhas, tigers and ruru deer and buffalo and the rest, ²¹and karnantras and one-footed creatures, horse-faced ones and musk deer. Its glory is the sandbanks of its lotus pools, closed in by groves of plantain.

²²It is ringed by the Nanda, whose water was made holier still by Sati's bathing in it. Looking on the mountain of the lord of beings, the gods were struck with wonder. ²³There they saw the lovely city called Alaka, and the wood called Saugandhika, where the lotus of that name grows. ²⁴Outside the city run two rivers, the Nanda and the Alakananda, made cleansing beyond measure by the dust from the lotus feet of him whose feet are the holy fords.