Jímútaváhana (starting from a throbbing of his right eye).[1]
My right eye throbs, though I have no object of desire. Yet the saying of the wise cannot prove false. What, then, can this portend?
Vidúshaka.
It shows undoubtedly that some loved object is at hand.
Jímútaváhana.
It must be as you say.
Vidúshaka (looking on all sides).
O friend, look! look! Here in good truth is all the appearance of an ascetic grove, resplendent with unusually thick and dense trees, its crowd of young animals reclining at ease unalarmed, and its smoke freely issuing laden with scent from the sacrificial ghee.
Jímútaváhana.
You conjecture rightly. This is an ascetic grove. The bark of the trees is stripped off for clothing, though not in too wide strips, as if out of pity for them. The pure water of the cascade has broken fragments of old waterpots[2] just visible at the bottom; and here and there appear the broken girdles of munja grass[3] cast off
- ↑ The Hindus believe that the throbbing of the right eye or arm is a good omen for a man, but of the left, a bad omen. The reverse of this holds in the case of a woman.
- ↑ Compare Manu II. 64:—"His girdle, his deerskin, his staff, his sacrificial cord, and his waterpot, he must throw into the water when they are worn out, and take others with sacred texts."
- ↑ Munja-grass, the Saccharum munja, from the fibres of which the string is prepared to form the thread worn by the Brahmans. Manu II. 43.
