The Palace in the Lake

Devahūti's trouble left her. Her words faltering with modesty and love, her face shining with a shy smile, she said: I know, my lord, that all this is yours to give, for your power of yoga never fails. But there was the promise you made when you took me, to stay with me until I bore your child, and so to be joined with me in body. Let it come. For a good wife, a child by a worthy husband is the good she looks for. Teach me what must be done, for I am worn thin with longing. And, my lord, find us a house that will suit.

To please her, Kardama entered into yoga, and in that very moment he brought forth a palace that flew wherever one wished. It shone like a thing of heaven, set with every kind of jewel, with pillars of gems and floors of emerald, with chambers one above another, beds and seats and fans, garlands with bees humming over them, banners and canopies, and golden arches on walls of diamond. Swans and doves came to settle on it, taking the carved birds for their own kind.

But when Kardama saw that she looked at it without much joy, he said to her, Bathe in this lake, timid one, and then climb into the palace. This lake was made by the Lord, and it fulfils men's wishes.

She went down into the lake of the Sarasvatī as she was, in a dusty garment, her hair in a single braid, her body grimy with dirt. Inside the lake she found a house, and in it a thousand young girls, fragrant as lotuses, who rose all together and said with folded hands, We are your servants. What shall we do? They bathed her and dressed her in new linen and fine ornaments, and gave her food and drink. In a mirror she saw herself garlanded and clean, with bracelets and anklets and a golden girdle, her face bright under her dark curls. And as soon as she thought of her husband, she found herself standing before him with all the women, and she wondered at the power of his yoga.

Kardama saw her bathed and shining as never before, in her own true beauty, and he took her up into the palace. In it they travelled through the pleasure gardens of the gods and the valleys of the great mountains, by the falling waters of the river of heaven, and he showed her the whole round of the earth and its wonders, and then came back to his hermitage. There, by the power of yoga, they lived together for a hundred years, and to them it seemed a little while.