Princess Kadambari, Vol 1

Notes

Quotes

[Here’s a lovely section of this poem, describing a kingdom ruled to perfection. The rhythm took a minute to get used to but I really enjoyed it once I found it]

And while that king who'd conquered the universe
was protecting the earth, for his subjects mixtures of caste occurred
only in paintings as mixing of colors;
pulling hair only in love-making;
rigorous imprisonment only in poetry as
rigid rules of composition;
worry only in respect of deliberation
about the forms of secular knowledge;
separations only in dreams;
fines in gold only as golden poles in parasols;
trembling only in flags;
manifestations of passionate emotion only in songs
as performances of musical ragas;
deterioration of behavior through intoxication
only in the case of the perturbation of elephants in rut;
absence of merits only in bows when their strings snapped;
deceitful practices only as latticework in windows;
stains were found only on armor, swords, and the moon;
messengers were sent only in the case of love quarrels,
not to declare war;
the only deserted houses were empty squares
on the boards of chess and dice games.
And for him there was fear only of the next world,
frustration only as the curve
in the curls of the women of his harem,
garrulity only as the noisiness of anklets,
imposing taxes only as taking the hand in marriages,
shedding tears only from the smoke
from the fires of ceaseless sacrifices,
the lash of the whip only on horses,
the twang of the bow only on the part
of mákara-bannered Kama.
Resembling the Golden Age huddled up
through fear of the time of the demon Kali, the fourth age,
extensive, as if it had been the place of origin of the three worlds,
encircled by the Vétravati river
whose garlands of waves broke up in collision with
the lovely Málava women's breasts as they bathed,
and whose waters took on the glow of evening
thanks to vermilion from the temples
of the victorious war elephants
come to dip themselves in its waters,
its banks resounding with the cackle of flocks
of impassioned kala-hansa geese—
such was his capital city. Vídisa was its name.

Quoted on January 6, 2026

[This is a PARROT talking:]

And in an old hollow of that tree,
where my father lived in his old age with his wife,
somehow, as fate would have it, I was born,
his only son. Even as I was being born,
overcome by the very severe pain of giving birth,
my mother passed on to the next world.
Though assuredly overwhelmed with grief
at the death of his beloved wife, my father,
out of love for his son, repressed his grief,
deep and severe though it was,
and devoted himself to bringing me up on his own.

[Like, just noting for the record, this bird's mother died in childbirth. And this is after pages and pages describing the jungle he comes from.]

Quoted on January 6, 2026

[We've gotten a couple of these passages now, showing a well-ruled kingdom by stating 'the only x was in {innocuous x}'. I'm into it.]

And while he was king, the only enmity was that mountains had lost their wings;
the only feeling of alienation
was that parts of words came after prefixes;
the only facing a person down that occurred
was standing in front of mirrors;
the only besieging of fortresses was
images of Shiva the trident-bearer embracing Durga;
the only carrying of bows
was clouds' possession of the rainbow;
the only haughtiness was the hoisting up of banners;
the only humiliation was the bending of bows;
the only wounding by arrows
was insects boring into bamboos...

Quoted on January 10, 2026

[Before this there was several pages describing the king sporting with his harem, in serious but poetic detail:]

What more need be said? Whatever was really pleasing,
just to his taste, and not counter
to his present and future interest,
with those things he occupied himself,
not that he became obsessed with them—
it was because hed completed his other duties
in respect of the world, not through any addiction.
For a king who has made his subjects rejoice
and completed all his duties in respect of his kingdom,
the playful enjoyment of the objects of the senses is an ornament,
though in the case of someone else
it would be somewhat disgraceful.

Quoted on January 10, 2026

The multitude of pleasures a kingdom brings
is a perpetual nightmare, a sleep
from which there's no waking when night ends.
So I must tell you about it at some length.
To be rich from birth, to be very young,
to have matchless beauty and more than human might
this is indeed a series of disasters.
Any one of these is the home of all bad behavior.
How much more their conjunction!

Quoted on January 13, 2026

[A lot of rays of light coming from toes and toenails in this book.]

some, like the beauty of a day in the rainy season,
wearing garments brilliant with the colors of the rainbow;
some had feet, with the sprout-like rays
from their white toe-nails shining forth,

Quoted on January 13, 2026