English translation (Verses 1-7 by Deven Patel; remainder
by K.K. Handiqui)
1. Then the lord of the earth [Nala], upon just seeing the princess, thought his long-awaited wish of attaining his sweetheart -- that wish that had been repeatedly rehearsed since its inception -- to have fully blossomed, as it were. [The poet fancies Nala's wish metonymically as the famous wish-fulfilling tree.]
2. First, the eyes of the king plunged into each and every limb of his beloved, then into the nectarine ocean of an inner, secret bliss and then into a tearful stream of intense delight.
3. When first he intently observed just a single tip of her hair, he experienced the intense delight of finding the One God. Accordingly, in beholding her entirety, he likewise experienced the joy of realizing the One Love.
4. When the ocean of Nala's passion swelled up on account of the nectar flowing from the vision of her moon-face, which had flooded a wide shoreline, his eyes found shelter on her elevated breasts. [The image plays on the fact of the moon's influence on the ocean's waves and fancies Nala's eyes as a drowning swimmer seeking higher ground.]
5. Was his gaze so submerged in the nectar of her moon-face? Caught in between the (tight) space between her breasts, was it delayed there? Was it from fear of a (precipitous) fall that it left her exceedingly svelte waist only after a long pause?
6. Nala's restless eye was most happily roaming, a wanderer among the limbs of the beloved, returning again and again to her breasts, as if bewildered in the gathered darkness of the musk that had been smeared on them.
7. Having rambled around the circle of her pleasing hips, the messenger's [i.e. Nala's] stumbling eye was, after a long while, steadied by firmly embracing with its ray of light [by pun: with its hand] her plantain stalk-like thighs.
9. Then, after having presented his beloved and her friends to his eyes to his heart’s content, the king said thus in his mind, full of joy and wonder.
[In Nala’s mind:]
10. It is doubtful if the creation of this amazing beauty pervading each limb would be possible, even if Cupid himself or my own fancy were to be installed in the Creator’s place.
11. I know her to be a river of the sentiment of love coming from ‘a mainstay of the earth,’ [mountain in the case of the river; the King and father in the case of Damayanti] in whom youth [or a loudly rumbling cloud], plump with swelling bosom, has caused a flood of graceful charm.”
14. As her limbs are superior, in spite of some resemblance, to all similar objects through some particular excellence, is any comparison of them possible? The fact is, any comparison of those limbs (with other objects) would be for them a humiliation.
15. Verily the women created in former times served only as sketching practice for the Creator’s hand in order to create her, while the creation of the present and future women is meant to procure her the fame of surpassing them in beauty.
20. The lock of her hair that surpasses the peacock’s train, though it has so many ‘moons’ [moonlike patches] on its feathers, has very properly found a place above her face which has but one moon as its friend. [its like in beauty]
21. It is the darkness in the front and on either side, dispelled by the moon of her face, that is tied behind her in the guise of her clearly undulating hair.
24. Did the flowery bow of Cupid, turned black during the latter’s burning (by Siva), have only the filaments as its residue? Did Siva in his wrath split even that into two, wherewith the Creator made Damayanti’s eyebrows?
28. Here she is, the tender arch of Cupid’s flowery bow, with a waist capable of being held in the grasp of the hand, who, in order to stupefy us, casts a shower of arrow-like glances let loose from the beautiful corners of her eyes.
33. Did the gazelles ever borrow from her the beauty of her eyes that she has by force realized it from the timid animals manifold and entire?
34. Would not her unsteady eyes, stepping far, meet each other, if the fear of falling into the earholes did not create an obstacle to their going?
37. The outline of her lower lip emerging along with the moon of her face calls itself the twilight of childhood and youth, resembling as it does the Bandhuka flower by the beauty of its crimson hue.
40. The two sides of her lower lip close to the center look somewhat swollen: am I not perhaps myself guilty of having bitten it with my teeth in my dalliance with her in dreams?
41. How many branches of learning with their sub-varieties dance on Damayanti’s lower lip? -- thus being curious, the Creator, free from his toils, seems to have reckoned them (by marking the lip) with lines.
44. The slightly elongated drops of luster, thicker than the rays of the moon, emitted by her face excelling the moon, are acting as the two rows of her teeth, the drops oozing first having become second (in the process). [i.e., the smaller drops oozing first have formed the second row, i.e., the lower teeth. The white teeth are fancied as drops distilled from the luster of the face.]
47. The Creator, having made all the limbs of Damayanti who is softer even than the cup of the Shirisha flower, and attained perfection in the creation of tender objects, put the final seal of softness on her voice.
48. Or, perhaps, does not the cuckoo bird living on alms from trees learn from her moon-like face a certain mystic doctrine propounding the oneness of Cupid, (just as a Brahmana living on alms learns from a noble Brahmana the monistic doctrine of the Upanisads)? [i.e., the amorous song of the cuckoo is an imitation of her voice.]
51. Did the Creator, on finishing her beauty, look at her, raising up her face? For there appears on her chin, slightly depressed (in the middle), something like an impression of a finger caused by a grasp.
54. The Creator made her lotus face an emperor amid the entire race of lotus blooms; hence it is that two lotus kings named ‘eyes’ wait upon it.
55. When the moon afraid of the sun during the day and the day lotus afraid of the moon at night deposit their beauty in her face, they are then without their beauty; but by virtue of the beauty of the one or the other, when is her face not lovely?
62. The channel-like line carved on her earrings that runs in the direction of her ear-holes is the path, by which the eddying nectar flow of the essence of the scriptures entered her ears.
63. Is it a new kind of numeral denoting the number nine with its deep-set outline carved within her ears, (indicating) that her ears, diving the eighteen branches of learning, held one half each? [The reference is to the curve of the outer ear resembling the Nagari nine. The idea of “hearing” different sciences from the guru is continued.]
66. Wonderful is her neck: it is beautiful with the nape and adorned with a necklace of pearls; it assumes a shape worth embracing, and by it the entire upper portion of the body looks beautiful. [By a clever choice of words the poet makes this verse sound strange in the ears of the hearer: “Her neck is something strange, being adorned with a manavaka (boy), though it is beautiful with an avatu (one who is not a boy); it looks beautiful (surupatabhak), possessing a whole urdhvaka drum, though it is assuming the form of an alingya drum.” The apparent contradiction is to be removed by taking these words in a more appropriate sense.]
67. In her throat the Creator fashioned poetry, song, courteous speech and truth, and under the pretext of putting three lines on it, he apportioned boundaries for them to live. [The presence of three lines on the neck is regarded as a sign of luck.]
72. “The making of lotus blossoms is my sketching practice for the making of thy hand” – did the Creator announce this to the deer-eyed damsel by sketching lotus blossoms on her hands? [The presence of lotus marks on the palm is regarded as a sign of luck. The idea is that the Creator was putting these marks by way of acquiring practice, in order to make the hands as beautiful as lotus blossoms.]
73. Are these creeper-like arms lotus-stalks visible on both sides of this my ‘joy-giving’ Narmada? Are these breasts the islets that emerged when in her the water of childhood dried up with Cupid’s heat? [i.e., at the advent of youth]
74. The palm fruit would be able to imitate her breasts, happy in their ascent, if it did not (at times) fall to the ground; not, however, by simply clinging on to the high tree; for the breasts of the slender girl are high by themselves. [i.e., without any outside help]
80. The traces left by the minds of the entire race of young men, as they slipped into the hollow of her bosom, slippery with sandal paste, are flashing in the shape of the beams emitted by the gems in her pearl-string. [It is fancied that the minds of younf men slipped into the intervening space between her breasts, as they were brooding over her beauty; while the jets of luster emitted by the gems in the pearl-string across her bosom, wet with sandal paste, are fancied as the traces of slipping left by these minds.]
81. It is a curious phenomenon of the kingdom of Cupid on Damayanti’s frame, perfect in every limb, that the slender belly is not attacked by its folds, though it stays amidst them. [The fatty rolls of skin on the upper belly, called Bali or Vali, meaning (by sound) also ‘powerful’, might be expected to attack their weak neighbor, the slender belly; but it remained free from all such attack, hence the wonder. The ideas is, her waist was slender in spite of the fatty rolls projecting over it.]
83. Round her waist, the Creator put a blue string in the shape of a row of hair, as if thinking, lucky like Parvati, she, too, would one day realize through her husband the completion of her half-complete self. [The row of downy hair on the waist is fancied as a string with which she would be joined to her husband.]
87. Verily on this plate of gold, namely, her back, this is a panegyric in honor of Cupid in letters of silver in the shape of the halos of the jasmine blossoms that are on her hair bound in knots.
94. The two stems of the slender damsel’s thighs surpassed the elephant’s trunk; so it is proper that it should hide its face – the tip of its trunk, in shame, under the pretext of coiling it round.
99. As in her pride of beauty she put her lotus-feet on the heads of the women of the world, her feet, owing to the redness of the dense vermilion power on their heads, became ruddier than the young sprouts of leaves.
102. The Creator, angry at the pride of being unique on the part of her single ear, eye, lip, arm, hand, foot, and the like, which surpassed all object similar to them, made on the self-same body a companion limb to each. [i.e., made a second ear, eye, etc. to wound the vanity of the first ones.]
104. The Creator drew on her, in the shape of her toes, as many lines as there were directions [The ten toes are fancied as lines indicating the ten directions], from which kings oppressed by Cupid would come to take shelter under those lotus feet.
107. The Creator had already created her as above the world; youth took her even beyond that; and then, Cupid, by training her in all accomplishments, put her beyond the range of words.
108. Thus describing the gazelle-eyed maiden, beginning with her
hair and ending with the nails of her feet, the king whose heart was swimming
in an ocean of amazement, and whose joy was overflowing his heart, made
up his mind to make himself visible to Damayanti surrounded by her friends.