Note 2 — Chapter C

When Mṛigánkadatta had said this, he quickly crossed that desert with his ministers, who were afflicted with hunger and thirst. And he beheld in front of him a great lake filled with pellucid and cold water, looking like streams that had flowed down from the moon after it had been melted with the heat of the sun. It was so broad that it filled the whole horizon, and it looked like a jewel-mirror made by the Fortune of the three worlds, in order to behold in it the reflection of herself. That lake resembled the Mahábhárata, for in it the Dhártaráshṭras2 were making a disturbance, and many Arjuna trees were reflected;3 and it was refreshing and sweet to the taste; it was like the churned sea of doom, for its precious fluid was drunk by the blue-necked jays that assembled near it,4 and Vishṇu might have resorted to it to find the goddess of Beauty:5 it resembled an earthly Pátála, for its profound cool depths were never reached by the rays of the sun, and it was an unfailing receptacle of lotuses.6