33. We have nothing to eat but roast game.
Indian game is often very dry and flavourless.
34. Attended by the Yavana women.
Who these women were has not been accurately ascertained. Yavana is properly Arabia, but is also a name applied to Greece. The Yavana women were therefore either natives of Arabia, or Greece, and their business was to attend upon the king, and take charge of his weapons, especially his bow and arrows. Professor H. H. Wilson, in his translation of the Vikramorva[s']í, where the same word occurs (Act V. p. 261), remarks that Tartarian or Bactrian women may be intended.
35. In the disc of crystal.
That is, the sun-gem (Súrya-kánta, 'beloved by the sun'), a shining stone resembling crystal. Professor Wilson calls it a fabulous stone with fabulous properties, and mentions another stone, the moon-gem (chandra-kánta). It may be gathered from this passage that the sun-stone was a kind of glass lens, and that the Hindús were not ignorant of the properties of this instrument at the time when '[S']akoontalá' was written.
36. Some fallen blossoms of the jasmine.
The jasmine here intended was a kind of double jasmine with a very delicious perfume, sometimes called 'Arabian jasmine' (Jasminum zambac). It was a delicate plant, and, as a creeper, would depend on some other tree for support. The Arka, or sun-tree (Gigantic Asclepias: Calotropis gigantea), on the other hand, was a large and vigorous shrub. Hence the former is compared to [S']akoontalá, the latter to the sage Kanwa.
37.
The mellowed fruit Of virtuous actions in some former birth.