Verse 32

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Alaka, and the banyan beyond it· Verses 25–32

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In those two, Ksatta, the women of the gods come down from their own seats and plunge in, worn thin with love, and play there, splashing the men. Their water turns tawny with the fresh saffron washed from those women, and the elephants drink it even when they are not thirsty, and give it to their cows to drink. The city is crowded with hundreds of sky-chariots of silver and gold and great gems, and thronged with the women of the holy folk, so that it looks like the sky full of cloud and lightning. They left behind the city of the lord of the yaksas, and that Saugandhika wood, pleasant with its wish-granting trees and their bright garlands and fruit and leaves,

where the bees are set off by the voices of the ranks of red-throated birds, dearest of places to the flocks of wild geese, with its pools of sharp-stalked lotus, and with a wind off the yellow sandal that the forest elephants have rubbed against, stirring the minds of the holy folk's women over and over. They saw the tanks with their steps of beryl, garlanded with blue lotuses and visited by the kimpurusas; and then, some way off, they saw a banyan. It stood a hundred leagues high, its branches reaching three quarters as far, its shade lying unmoving on every side, with no nest in it and no heat beneath it.