Desire on the Snow Mountain

In the seventh era, Indra, king of the gods, came to know of that austerity and set out to break it. He sent gandharvas and apsarases, the singers and dancers of heaven, to the sage, and Kāma, the god of desire, and the Spring with the wind from the Malaya mountains, and with them Passion and Intoxication.

They came to his hermitage on the northern side of the Himālaya, where the river Puṣpabhadrā flows past the rock called Citrā. It was a holy place, with holy trees and creepers, flocks of holy birds and clear pools. Bees drunk on honey hummed there, cuckoos called, peacocks danced, and a wind blew in carrying spray from the icy waterfalls, wrapped in the scent of flowers. Spring came, with new shoots and rows of bees and the rising moon of evening, and Kāma came, lord of the troops of heaven's women, his bow and arrows in hand, followed by gandharvas singing and playing.

They found the sage seated after his fire offering, his eyes closed, as unassailable as fire in bodily form. The apsarases danced before him, the gandharvas sang, and drums and vīṇās played. Kāma fitted his five-pointed arrow to his bow, and Spring and Passion set about shaking the sage's mind. The apsaras Puñjikasthalī played with her balls, and as she ran after them, the wind carried off her fine garment and broke her girdle. Then Kāma loosed his arrow, sure the sage was already his.

All of it came to nothing, like the efforts of the powerless. Burned by the heat of the sage's austerity, they turned and fled, like children who have woken a snake. That the great sage, so assailed, never rose up in the pride of self is no wonder in one so great. And when Indra saw Kāma and his company come back with their fire put out, and heard of the sage's power, he was filled with wonder.