Verse 1

¹So, when his father had set out, Agnidhra kept to what his father had laid down, and, keeping his eye on dharma, guarded the people who lived in Jambudvipa as though they had been born of his own body. ²And once, wanting the world of the fathers, he went to a valley of the hill where the women of the high gods play, gathered what was needed for the worship, and, practising austerity with the self held to one point, served the revered lord of those who make the world. ³Learning of it, the revered first Person sent to him a woman of heaven named Purvacitti, who had been singing in his hall. ⁴She walked in the pleasure grove of that hermitage, which was lovely past telling. Pairs of birds sat on golden creepers wound through the thick clustered branches of many trees, and what they said sounded like recitation; the water birds were waking, the water-cock and the karandava and the kalahamsa and the rest; and about the clear lotus pools the calling ran on strangely and sweetly.

⁵The king's son heard at every step the fine ringing of the bright ornaments on her feet as she came with the play of that graceful walk, and the two lotus buds of his eyes, shut in the yoke of absorption, opened a little, and he looked. ⁶She was close by, smelling the flowers like a bee. Her walk, her play, her shyness, her manners, her glances, her sweet-voiced speech and the parts of her body milked delight for the eyes and minds of gods and men, and in the minds of men they opened a way for the one whose weapon is a flower. Bees blind with the wine of her smiling talk, honey-scented from her own mouth, pressed about her, and she stepped quickly to get free of them, so that her pitcher breasts and the weight of her braid and her girdle shook sweetly. Looking at her gave its opening to the revered one whose banner is the sea-beast, and Agnidhra, brought under his power, spoke to that lady like a man gone dull.