Note 24 — APPENDIX.

The city seems possessed of rocks, with its palaces; it stretches like a suburb with its long houses; it is like the tree that grants desires with its good citizens; it bears in its painted halls the mirror of all forms. Like twilight, it shines with the redness of rubies;24 (107) like the form of the Lord of Heaven, it is purified with the smoke of a hundred sacrifices; like the wild dance of Çiva, it has the smiles, which are its white markets;25 like an old woman, it has its beauty worn;26 like the form of Garuḍa, it is pleasing in being the resting-place of Vishṇu;27 like the hour of dawn, it has its people all alert; like the home of a mountaineer, it has palaces in which ivory cowries28 are hanging; like the form of Çesha,29 it always bears the world; like the hour of churning the ocean, it fills the end of the earth with its hubbub;30 like the rite of inauguration, it has a thousand gold pitchers31 at hand; like Gaurī, it has a form fit to sit on the lion-throne; like Aditi, honoured in a hundred houses of the gods; like the sports of Mahāvarāha, showing the casting down of Hiraṇyāksha;32 like Kadrū, it is a joy to the race of reptiles;33 like the Harivaṃça, it is charming with the games of many children.34 (108) Though its courts are open to all, its glory is uninjured;35 though it glows with colour,36 it is white as nectar; though it is hung with strings of pearls, yet when unadorned37 it is adorned the most; though composed of many elements,38 it is yet stable, and it surpasses in splendour the world of the immortals.