Chapter XC: Section I

DESCRIPTION OF THE COURT HOUSE AND THE CORTES.

41. Lílá having seen all these began to reflect within herself, whether the inhabitants of this place were living beings or the ghosts of their former living souls.

42. Then having recovered her sense at the removal of her trance, she entered into her inner apartment at midnight, and found the inmates fast bound in sleep.

43. She raised one by one her sleeping companions, and said she was anxious to visit the royal hall.

44. She wanted to be seated beside the throne of her lord, and to clear her doubt by seeing the courtiers all alive.

45. The royal menials rose up at her call, and obedient to her command they said “Be it so,” and attended to their respective duties.

46. A train of club-bearers ran to all sides to call the courtiers from the city, and sweepers came and swept the ground as clean as the sun had shed his rays upon it.

47. A better set of servants cleansed the court-yard as clean, as autumn days clear the firmament of its rainy clouds.

48. Rows of lights were placed about the court-yard, which looked as beautiful as clusters of stars in the clear sky.

49. The ground of the court-yard was filled by throngs of people, as the earth was covered of yore by floods of the great deluge.

50. The dignified ministers and chiefs attended first and took their respective seats, and appeared as a set of the newly created rulers of people of the world on all sides, or the regents of the quarters of the sky.

51. The cooling and fragrant odour of thickly pasted camphor filled the palace, and the sweet-scented zephyrs breathed profusely the fragrance of the lotus flowers, which they bore from all sides.

52. The chamberlains stood all around in their white garbs, and appeared as an assemblage of silvery clouds, hanging over the burning hills under the equator.

53. The ground was strewn over by the morning breeze with heaps of flowers, bright as the beaming dawn dispelling the gloom of night, and etiolated as clusters of stars fallen upon the ground.

54. The palace was crowded by the retinue of the chiefs of the land, and seemed as it was a lake full of full-blown lotuses, with the fair swimming swans rambling about them.

55. There Lílá took her seat on a golden seat by the side of the throne, and appeared as the beauteous Rati seated in the joyous heart of Káma (_i.e._ as Venus sitting in the lap of aureate lighted Phoebus).

56. She saw all the princes seated in their order as before, and the elders of the people and the nobles of men and all her friends and relatives, seated in their proper places.

57. She was highly delighted to behold them all in their former states, and shone forth as the moon with the brightness of her countenance, to find them all alive again.