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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 4: Sthiti-Prakarana (On Ontology or Existence). Chapter 49 - Description of Dāśūra's Kadamba Forest
Vasistha continued: Thus Dāśūra remained in the forest, reaching to the region of the clouds, and forming a stage for the halting of the tired horses of the meridian sun at midday. 1
Its far stretching boughs spread a canopy under the vault of heaven on all sides, and it looked to the skies all around with its full blown blossoming eyes.
The gentle winds were shedding the fragrant dust from the tufts of its hanging hairs, which studded with swarms of fluttering bees, and its waving leaves like palms of its hands, were brushing over the face of its fairy welkin.
The banks with their long shrubbery, and the crimson filaments of their milk- white blossoms, were smiling like the fair faces of beauties, with their teeth tinged with reddish hue of betel leaves.
The creeping plants were dancing with delight, and shedding the dust from the pistils of their flowers, which were clustered in bunches and beaming with the lustre of the full bright moon.
The earth with its thickening thickets, and the warbling cakoras as amongst them, appeared as the milky path of heaven studded with stars singing their heavenly strains.
Groups of peacocks sitting on the tops of branching trees, appeared with variegated trains, like rainbows amidst the verdant foliage, seeming as bluish clouds in the azure sky.
The white spotted deer with half of their bodies hidden under the coverts of the woods, and their four parts appearing without the thickets, appeared as so many moons with their dark and bright sides in the sky.
The warbling of cātakas, joined with the trill of cuckoos, and the whistling cakoras, filled the groves with a continuous harmony.
Flocks of white herons sitting on their nestling boughs, seemed as bodies of siddha sylphs, sitting quietly beside their coverts in heaven.
Waving creepers with their ruddy leaflets shaking with the breeze, and their blooming blossoms beset by bees, resembled the Apsarās of heaven, flapping their rosy palms and looking at the skies.
The clusters of Kumuda or blue lotuses, moving on the sky-blue waters with their yellow filaments, and shedding their golden dust around, appeared as the rainbow and lightings, darting their radiance in the azure sky.
The forest with thousands of uplifted branches, seemed as the god Viśva-rūpa lifting his thousand arms on high, and dancing with the breeze, with the pendant orbs of the sun and moon, suspended as the earrings to both his ears.
The groups of elephants lying underneath the branches, and the clusters of stars shining above them, gave the woodlands an appearance of the sky, with its dark clouds moving below the blazing stars above.
The forest was as the store house of all sorts of fruits and flowers, as the God Brahmā was the reservoir of all sorts of productions.
The ground glistened with the falling florets and the farina of the flowers, as the firmament glittered with the lustre of solar and stellar light.
The flights of birds flying on the boughs of trees, and those fluttering about their nests, and the flocks of fowls feeding on the ground, made the forest appear as a city with its people above, below and all about it.
Its bowers resembled the inner apartments of houses, with the blossoms waving as flags over them, and strewn over with the white farina of flowers, as they decorate the floors with flowers and powders, and hung flowers over them, as upon the windows of houses.
There was the joint harmony of the humming bees and buzzing beetles; the twittering of kakoras and parrots, and cooing of cokilas in the deep coverts of the woods; and issuing out of their holes like the music of song-stresses, coming out in unison from the hollows of windows.
Birds of various kinds hovered about the coverts of the sylvan goddesses; as they were the only guests of their lonely retreats.
The bees were continually humming over the farinaceous pistils of flowers, and sounding water-falls were incessantly exuding from the high hills in its neighbourhood.
Here the gentle zephyrs were continually playing with the waving flowers; and the hoary clouds overtopped the lofty trees, as they do the tops of mountains.
The sturdy woods resembling high hills, were rubbed by the scabby cheeks of elephants, and stood unmoved though they were incessantly dashed by their huge legs and feet. 2
Birds of variegated plumage that dwelt in the hollows of the trees, were as the various races of beings dwelling in the person of Visnu. 3
With the movements of their painted leaves, resembling the fingers of their palms, the trees seemed to keep time with the dancing creepers, and point out the modes of their oscillation.
They danced also with delight with their branching arms and clasping armlets of the creepers, to think on the subsistence, that every part of their body affords to all kinds of living beings. 4
And thinking how they are the support of thousands of creeping plants, which entwine round them as their consorts, they sing their joyous chime in the buzzing of the bees about them.
The flowers dropped down by the kind siddha (sylphs) from the trees, were hailed by the bees and cuckoos with their joyous notes and tunes.
The kadamba tree seemed by its blooming blossoms, to laugh to derision, the five woody arbours on the skirts which do not bear their flowers. 5
With its uplifted head reaching to the sky, and the flight of birds flying over it like the hairs on its head, it seemed to defy the pārijata tree of Indra's heaven.
The body of bees thronging all about its person, gave it the appearance of the thousand eyed Indra, with whom it vied in the greater number of its eyes.
It had a tuft of flowers on some part of its head, appearing as the hood of a snake decorated with gems, and seeming as the infernal serpent had mounted its top with his crowned head, inorder to survey the wonders of heaven.
Besmeared with the pollen of its flowers, it appeared as the god Śiva anointed with his powdered ashes; while its shady bowers overhung with luscious fruits, refreshed the passing travellers with rest and repast.
The kadamba arbour appeared as the garden of paradise, having alcoves under its thickening boughs, and grottos formed by the flowery creepers below it; while the birds of heaven hovertd about it as its perpetual inhabitants.
Footnotes
1. As high as to reach the sphere of the sun at noon.
2. See Kumāra Sambhava.
3. Visnu means the residence of beings like Verāja.
4. The produce of trees supplies the supportance of all living creatures.
5. These are the banian, bata and ficus religious, the mango, the fig tree and frondos. (i.e. and called or lords of woods).
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