Verse 22

¹⁴The city was ringed by the goddess Ganga of the sky, which served it as a moat, and by a rampart the colour of fire, tall, with watchtowers set along it, ¹⁵and fitted with gates whose doors were plated with gold and whose gatehouses were of crystal. Its highways were laid out one from another, and Visvakarman had made it. ¹⁶It was rich in halls and courtyards and streets, and held a hundred million sky-chariots. Its crossroads were made of jewels, with platforms of diamond and coral. ¹⁷There women whose youth and beauty never change, dark-skinned, in spotless clothes, shine out in their loveliness as fires shine out with their flames.

¹⁸And the wind blows along its streets carrying the sweetness of fresh fragrant garlands fallen from the hair of the women of the gods. ¹⁹White smoke scented with aloe comes out through the lattices of the golden windows, and along the streets it covers over, the women beloved of the gods walk. ²⁰It was hung with canopies of pearl and with pennants of jewel and gold, covered over with many flags along its eaves, loud with peacocks and doves and bees, made auspicious by the sweet singing of the women of the sky-chariots. ²¹It was a delight with the sound of drums and conches and kettledrums, with lutes kept to the beat and tabors and the flutes they love, with dances and music and the songs of the lesser gods; and by its own light it put all other light down.

²²Those who trample dharma do not go there, nor the cruel, nor those who do harm to living things, nor the false, the proud, the lustful, the greedy. Those free of these go there.