पृष्ठ:पदुमावति.djvu/३३९

98] PADUMĀWATI. 49 fair complexion and of her form, and they are now imprinted like a picture on my heart. Her form hath, as it were, become the Sun, which hath taken up its dwelling in my soul, and which, filling my whole being, hath become manifest in my heart. Now, though thus I have become the Sun, and she the Moon, yet'tis I who borrow my radiance from her (and not she from me). Were this not so, I should be but a fish without water,-a body without blood. In the radiance of her beams, shoots of young love bave sprung up (within my heart). Even if this Moon be in the heavens, I, as the Sun, will meet her there. Her rays are thousandfold, and bewilder my soul. Where'er I gaze, the whole universe seemeth to be but one lotus;% and where that lotus is, there my soul hath become the bee, and the moon hath found itself in debt to Rāhu.3 Sun-stone, which gives out a blazing light in the Sun, the line means, The jewel became raby-coloured in the blaze of the Sun' mentioned at the end of the last verse. 1 In his agitation, the king compares, sometimes himself, and sometimes Padmavati to the Sun. % This absorption of one's whole self, and all one's sentient powers, in one idea, is expressed in Hindi by the phrase 'The worm has become the ichneamon. The bhrgga, or ichneumon, is a wasp-like insect, of the order Hymenoptera, the female of which, by means of its ovipositor, first stings and stupefies some other insect or caterpillar, and then deposits its eggs in its body. In process of time, the larvæ are hatched, and find their food by devouring, bit by bit, the interior of their living, but still stupefied, host. When nothing but the empty shell remains, they come forth into public life. The thryga is wrongly described in the dictionaries as a kind of wasp. The Indian tradition differs from the actual facts of natural history. It is said that when the ichneamon stings the insect, the pain to the latter is so severe that it is filled with terror, which renders it motionless and compels it to remain night and day doing nothing but meditating in rapt absorption on the ichneumon. So inte is this absorption, that the insect gradually abandons its own nature, and ultimately, itself, becomes an ichneumon. This is a favourite simile of teachers of the Vedantic school. Like the insect stung by the ichneumon, the sonl, hy absorption in contemplation on the Deity, gradually becomes, itself, a portion of the Deity. Here, Ratna-sēna represents himself as gradually becoming, in the same way, one with Padmā. vati. The more usual Hindi name for an ichneumon is bilani. 3 i.e., as Rāhu, the demon of the Eclipse, covets and claims the moon, so I covet and claim her. When the Gods and Demons fought for possession of the nectar produced at the Churning of the Ocean, Visnu took the form of a beautiful woman, named Mõhini, and she persuaded the combatants to make over the jar of the precious liquor to her, to divide amongst them. She arranged the Demons in one line, and the Gods in another. To the former, she only gave the wine which also appeared from the Ocean when it was churned, and to the latter sbe distributed the immortality-giving nectar. The Demon Rāhu, who was the ascending Node of the Moon, disguised himself, and stood in the row of the Gods between the Sun and the Moon. Möhini handed him the jar of nectar in his tarn, and as he commenced to drink, the San and the Moon told her that this was a Demon, not a God, and that he had no right to be there. In her rage, Mõhini there and then cut off Rāhu's head with Vişnu's diseng. Owing to the nectar which he had drunk, Rahu's head and body both remained alive, though severed from each other. To console him, Brahma gave him the boon that whenever the Sun and the Moon came into conjunction, he might swallow one of them, and that all dedications, sacrifices, and good works done during the time of swallowing should be his by right. In this way, it is said that the Sun and the Moon are in 7