Note 153 — KĀDAMBARĪ.

(97) ‘The day was now drawing to a close. When the hermits rose from their bathing, and were offering a sacrifice, the sun in the sky seemed to bear upwards before our eyes the offering cast on the ground, with its unguent of red sandal-wood. Then his glow faded and vanished; the effluence of his glory was drunk by the Ushmāpas153 with faces raised and eyes fixed on his orb, as if they were ascetics; and he glided from the sky pink as a dove’s foot, drawing in his rays as though to avoid touching the Seven Ṛishis as they rose. His orb, with its network of crimson rays reflected on the Western Ocean, was like the lotus of Vishṇu on his couch of waters pouring forth nectar; his beams, forsaking the sky and deserting the lotus-groves, lingered at eve like birds on the crest of hill and tree; the splashes of crimson light seemed for a moment to deck the trees with the red bark garments hung up by the ascetics. And when the thousand-rayed sun had gone to rest, twilight sprang up like rosy coral from the Western Ocean. (98) Then the hermitage became the home of quiet thought, as the pleasant sound of milking the sacred cows arose in one quarter, and the fresh kuça grass was scattered on the altar of Agni, and the rice and oblations to the goddesses of space were tossed hither and thither by the hermitage maidens. And red-starred eve seemed to the hermits as the red-eyed cow of the hermitage roaming about, tawny in the fall of day. And when the sun had vanished, the lotus-bed, in the grief of bereavement, seemed to perform a vow in the hopes of rejoining the lord of day, for she lifted the goblets of her buds, and wore the fine white vesture of her haṃsas, and was girt with the sacrificial thread of white filaments, and bore a circle of bees as her rosary. And the starry host leapt up and filled the sky, like a splash of spray when the sun fell into the Western Ocean; and for a brief space the star-bespangled sky shone as though inlaid with flowers offered by the daughters of the Siddhas154 in honour of twilight; but in a moment the whole glory of the gloaming vanished as though washed away by the libations which the hermits, with faces upraised, cast towards the sky; (99) and at its departure, night, as sorrowing for its loss, wore a deeper darkness, like a black antelope’s skin—a blackness which darkened all save the hearts of the hermits.