वासवदत्ता (महाकवि सुबन्धु - श्लेष-प्रधान शास्त्रीय गद्यकाव्य सान्वय सटीक)

120 VĀSAVADATTĀ had been removed by the black fisherman casting his net ¹ of darkness in the great ocean of the sky; [250] when the mendicant expanded lotus grove, wearing vestments of red robes ² (and) bearing a book of a hundred leaves with reed threads of unevenly growing delicate lotus-fibres, seemed to pronounce his laws by the soft and very deep sounds of the bees,³ intoxicated by their heavy draughts in milking the drops of honey; when, like seeds of blackness, the bees were sown by the darkness, as by a hus- bandman, in the white lotuses with their fields of flowers, with their masses of pollen made mud by the juice of their honey, with their petals touched by the clouds under the guise of bees ⁴; [251] when the lotus ⁵ offered to the Lord whose garland is of rays ⁶ a mass of ⁷ incense, as it were, in the semblance of high- stalked white lotuses thronged with swarms ⁸ of bees with their pollen fire; when the moon ⁹ resembled a mortar whose interior had been destroyed by blows of the pestle of rising dawn, shaken by the two palms of his consort Night; when the hosts of stars had vanished like grain scattered in the threshing mortar; when the hosts of stars seemed to have flowers ¹⁰ expanded for the quarters of heaven that were bent like branches, and when the disc of the moon had fallen like fruit because of the monkey of day that, like the ruddy face ¹¹ of dawn, had climbed the tree of heaven; [252] when the cock of day, with the lovely appear- ance of the new crest ¹² of the glittering Aruṇa, had begun to traverse the court of heaven, variegated with the threshed grain ¹ Tel. ed., ‘launching his boat.’ ² Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘red robes of twilight.’ ³ Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘by the delightful sounds of the bees.’ ⁴ Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘when, like masses of the seeds of blackness, the bees were sown in the fields of flowers, whose masses of pollen were made mud by the juice of their honey, the folds of whose petals were touched by the clouds.’ ⁵ Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘lotus hermitess.’ ⁶ The sun. ⁷ Tel. ed. and Srirangam text omit ‘a mass of.’ ⁸ Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘filled with smoke of swarms.’ ⁹ Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘disc of the moon.’ ¹⁰ Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘an abundance of flowers.’ ¹¹ Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘that, having the ruddy face.’ ¹² Tel. ed. and Srirangam text, ‘appearance of the crest of rays.’