Verse 1

¹Brahmin, we want to know how the conqueror married the sister of Rama and Krsna, she who was my father's mother. ²Arjuna the lord, wandering the earth on a journey to the fords, came to Prabhasa and there heard of his mother's brother's daughter. ³Rama would give her to Duryodhana, he heard, and the others would not. Wanting her, he became a wandering ascetic with the three staffs and went to Dvaraka. ⁴There he stayed through the months of the rains, working at what he was after, honoured again and again by the townspeople, and by Rama, who did not know him. ⁵One day Bala brought him home and invited him as a guest, and he ate the begged food that Bala offered him with trust, so it is said.

⁶There he saw a grown girl, one to steal a hero's mind, and with his eyes opening wide with pleasure he set his mind upon her, shaken with feeling.