Kumarasambhavam: The Origin of the Young God by Kalidasa

Author:Kalidasa
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351187202
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sarga Seven

Umāpariṇayaḥ

The Marriage of Umā

1

When the moon, who is Lord of the Plants, had waxed

into his auspicious seventh sign, The Wife’s Fortune,

Himālaya and his kinsmen carried out the ceremonies

of purification before the marriage of his daughter.

2

In every house, the matrons attended to ritual

from which blessings would issue for the marriage. Love

seemed to unite all the city of Himālaya and

the chambers of his women into a single family.

3

Flowers of the heavenly santānaka tree were scattered

along its boulevards where the gold arches flamed

on high over the rows of flags in Chinese silk

and the city seemed like heaven brought to earth.

4

Though her parents had many children, Umā

alone, because she was so close to being married

away, became their breath of life, like someone

seen after long parting, or a dead woman risen.

5

She moved from embrace to embrace and she was blessed,

given ornament after ornament to enjoy, and all the love

divided among relatives in The Mountain’s family

united and travelled to her as if to its home.

6

At the hour sacred to the sun, with the moon entered

into his twelfth house, The Stars That Form a Bed,

women of her family whose husbands and whose sons

all were living began to embellish her body.

7

She adorned the dress she wore for the rubbing with oil

and it was made more beautiful by the white mustard seed

for protection fastened among sprouts of sacred grass.

Her navel was freed of its silk and she held an arrow.

8

With that arrow just come into her hand as a sign

of her marriage to someone far higher, she shone

ready for the ceremonies, like the moon as it lights up,

its dark days over, touched by a first ray of sunlight.

9

When fine lodhra powder had dried her body of oil

and she was slightly moistened then with kaleya paste,

dressed in a cloth proper for the bath, she was led

by the women to the four-columned bathing hall.

10

Blocks of lapis lazuli formed the stones of that floor,

adorned and variegated with inlaid pearls,

and there, pouring the water out of golden jars,

they bathed her as auspicious trumpets played.

11

Pure and clean after the bath of blessing, then

dressed in clothes with which she would go to her husband,

she shone like the earth when, bathing in fallen rain,

it flowers white with the open kāśa blossoms.

12

And women distinguished for devotion to their husbands

received her and led her from that place to the centre

of the marriage altar, where a canopy was raised

on four columns of jewels and a throne was ready.

13

The women, when they had seated her facing east,

delayed for a time, sitting in front of her,

the decorations ready beside them while their eyes

were drawn to the sight of beauty in its true form.

14

Her handsome mass of hair, dried by the smoke

of incense, and blossoms within it, was then tied up

into an elegant knot by a woman using a garland

of pale yellow madhüka flowers and sacred grass.

15

They rubbed her body with a paste of white aloe wood,

then drew ornamental leaves with bright yellow pigment

and she glowed more than the Gangā does with the footprints

of cakravāka birds marking the sands of its shores.

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