Page 162 - Himalayan Art Macrh 19 2018 Bonhams

“Like a painting unfolding under the brush
or a lotus spreading open at the sun’s touch,
every part of her [Parvati’s] body had its perfect
symmetry in the fresh fullness of her youth.

When she walked, with the glitter of her lightly
arching great toes and nails, at the steps
of her feet, the earth seemed to pour up red,
a wealth of moving lotuses on land.

She could have learned her sloping walk,
with the movements all a play of grace,
from the imperial geese, who themselves were
eager to learn the rhythms of her anklets.

She had thighs so lovely, rounded and even,
and long but not too long, that it seemed her maker
must have summoned up a great effort of creation
to match the glow of them in the rest of her limbs.

Since the trunk of an elephant has too harsh a skin
and the plantain stalk is always cold,
those similes the world offers to express flowing,
ample curves were useless for those thighs.

And the splendor of her hips can be measured
by how Śiva, at last, would lift them
to his lap and there, faultless; she would rest
where even the desires of other women cannot go.”

(Kumarasambhavam by Kalidasa, verses 31-7, translated by Hank
Heifetz, 2014)

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