SPORTS OF DEATH.
Time stands the foremost of all deceitful players in this world. He
acts the double parts of creation and destruction, and of action and
fate (utility and fatality).
2. Time has no other character but those of action and motion by
which his existence is known to us, and which bind all beings (in the
succession of thoughts and acts).
3. Fate is that which frustrates (the necessary consequences of) the
acts of all created beings, as the solar heat serves to dissolve the
conglomeration of snows.
4. This wide world is the stage wherein the giddy mob dance about (in
their appointed times).
5. Time has a third name of a terrifying nature known as _Kritántah_
(Fate), who in the form of a Kápálika (one holding human skulls in his
hand), dances about in the world.
6. This dancing and loving Kritántah (Fate), is accompanied by
his consort called Destiny to whom he is greatly attached (as his
colleague).
7. Time (as Siva), wears on his bosom of the world, the triplicate
white and holy thread composed of the serpent named Ananta and the
stream of Ganges, and the digit of the moon on his forehead (to measure
his course). (_Viz_:—the Zodiacal belt; the milky way, and the lunar
mansions).
8. The sun and the moon are the golden armlets of time, who holds in
his palm the mundane world as the paltry plaything of a nosegay.
9. The firmament with its stars appears like a garment with coloured
spots in it; the clouds called _Pushkara_ and _Avarta_ are as the
skirts of that garment, which are washed by Time in the waters of the
universal deluge.
10. Before him, dances his beloved Destiny with all her arts for ever,
to beguile the living that are fond of worldly enjoyments.
11. People hurry up and down to witness the dance of Destiny, whose
unrestrained motion keeps them at work, and causes their repeated
births and deaths.
12. The people of all the worlds are studded about her person as her
ornaments, and the sky stretching from the heaven of gods to the
infernal regions, serves for the veil on her head.
13. Her feet are planted in the infernal regions, and the hell-pits
ring at her feet like trinkets, tied by the string of evil deeds or
sins (of men).
14. She is painted all over from head to foot by the god _Chitra Gupta_
with ornamental marks prepared by her attendants (the deeds of men),
and perfumed with the essence of those deeds.
15. She dances and reels at the nod of her husband at the end of the
_Kalpas_, and makes the mountains crack and crash at her foot-falls.
16. Behind her dance the peacocks of the god Kumára; and Kála the god
of death staring with his three wide open eyes, utters his hideous
cries (of destruction).
17. Death dances about in the form of the five headed Hara, with the
loosened braids of hair upon him; while Destiny in the form of Gaurí,
and her locks adorned with _Mandára_ flowers keeps her pace with him.
18. This Destiny in her war-dance, bears a capacious gourd representing
her big belly, and her body is adorned with hundreds of hollow human
skulls jingling like the alms-pots of the Kapáli mendicants.
19. She has filled (reached) the sky with the emaciated skeleton of her
body, and gets terrified at her all destructive figure.
20. The skulls of the dead of various shapes adorn her body like a
beautiful garland of lotuses, which keep hanging to and fro during her
dance at the end of a _Kalpa_ age.
21. The horrible roaring of the giddy clouds Pushkara and Avarta at
the end of the Kalpa, serves to represent the beating of her _Damaru_
drum, and put to flight the heavenly choir of _Tumburu_.
22. As death dances along, the moon appears like his ear-ring, and the
moon-beams and stars appear like his crest made of peacocks’ feathers.
23. The snow-capt Himálaya, appears like a circlet of bones in the
upper loop of his right ear, and the mount _Meru_ as a golden areola in
that of the left.
24. Under their lobes are suspended the moon and the sun, as pendant
ear-rings glittering over his cheeks. The mountain ranges called the
_lokáloka_ are fastened like chains around his waist.
25. The lightnings are the bracelets and armlets of Destiny, which move
to and fro as she dances along. The clouds are her wrappers that fly
about her in the air.
26. Death is furnished with many weapons, as clubs, axes, missiles,
spears, shovels, mallets and sharp swords, all of which are sure
weapons of destruction.
27. Mundane enjoyments are no other than long ropes dropped down by the
hand of death, and keeping all mankind fast bound to the world; while
the great thread of infinity (_ananta_) is worn by him as his wreath of
flowers.
28. The belts of the seven oceans are worn about the arms of Death as
his bracelets resplendent with the living sea-animals, and the bright
gems contained in their depths.
29. The great vortices of customs, the successions of joy and grief,
the excess of pride and the darkness of passions, form the streaks of
hair on his body.
30. After the end of the world, he ceases to dance, and creates anew
all things from the lowest animal that lives in the earth, to the
highest Brahmá and Siva (when he resumes his dance).
31. Destiny as an actress, acts by turns her parts of creation and
destruction, diversified by scenes of old age, sorrow and misery.
32. Time repeatedly creates the worlds and their woods, with the
different abodes and localities teeming with population. He forms
the moveable and immovable substances, establishes customs and again
dissolves them, as boys make their dolls of clay and break them soon
afterwards.