Note 155 — KĀDAMBARĪ.

‘Learning that the sun had gone to rest, the lord of rays ambrosial, in pure severity of light, arrayed in the whiteness of clear gossamer, dwelling in the palace of his wives with Tārā,155 mounted the sky which, in that it was outlined with the darkness of tamāla-trees, presided over by the circle of Seven Ṛishis, purified by the wanderings of Arundhatī,156 surrounded by Āshāḍha,157 showing its Mūla158 with its soft-eyed white deer,159 was a very hermitage of heaven. White as a haṃsa, moonlight fell on the earth, filling the seas; falling, as Ganges from the head of Çiva, from the sky which was decked with the moon, and inlaid with the shattered potsherds of the stars. (100) And in the moon-lake, white as an opening lotus, was seen the motionless deer, which went down in eagerness to drink the water of the moonbeams, and was caught, as it were, in the mud of ambrosia. The lakes of the night-lotus were fondly visited by the moonbeams, like haṃsas, falling on the ocean white as sinduvāra flowers in their fresh purity after the rains. At that moment the globe of the moon lost all the glow of its rising, like the frontal bone of the elephant Airāvata when its red lead is washed away by plunging into the heavenly stream; and his highness the cold-shedder had gradually risen high in the sky, and by his light had whitened the earth as with lime-dust; the breezes of early night were blowing, slackened in their course by the cold dew, aromatic with the scent of opening moon-lotuses, (101) and gladly welcomed by the deer, who, with eyes weighed down by the approach of sleep, and eyelashes clinging together, were beginning to ruminate and rest in quiet.