Then said the mountain goddess: But in what, then, lies the superiority of sex to sex, and man to woman? And why is not he a mine of faults, as well as she?
And as she spoke, she was conscious of a change: and all at once she looked, and found that she was lying, not on the Great God's breast, but on the green side of a hill. And instantly she exclaimed, in a pet: Now he has cheated me again, suddenly substituting this green hill for his own body, and going somewhere else, leaving me in the lurch, without an answer to my doubt. And now I shall have to wait, until he chooses to return. And doubtless he thinks, that after a little while, I shall have utterly forgotten all about it; but on the contrary, I will very carefully remember to make him answer, and I will take my hair down, and keep it so, until he does. And in the meantime, I will go, and listen to my own praises; and show myself, it may be, for a moment, in return for them, to my worshippers in the Windhya hills.
[[1]] The upahára sandhi, or alliance produced by a gift from one of the contracting parties, is, according to Wishnusharma, of the fourteen different kinds of alliance, the best. I have selected Cordial Understanding as its nearest equivalent.
[[2]] Abhimánika is a piece of profound psychology, utterly beyond translation. It means the intense self-gratification, or egoistic pride felt by either lover, conscious of monopolising the other's love, in being that other's adequate and reciprocal opposite and satisfaction: the strange and sweet emotion, half bashful, half triumphant; that seethes and bubbles in a young man's soul, when first a woman falls in love with him.
THE END
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A Selection from the
Catalogue of
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Complete Catalogues sent
on application