behold came rivers of milk and honey, rushing over beds of broth and bubbling with curd and swirling with molasses into pools of ghee. Gods, men and demons, spirits, gandharvas,* snakes and birds and anchorites deepversed in the Veda body and limb all flocked to his rites. All his priests were seers steeped in learning. Only when he had brought his vast and flourishing kingdom down to the sea’s edge and given it to the twiceborn and spread his fame far and wide did that lord of men finally set like the sun and depart for paradise.
O Srinjaya, if even Mandhatri had to die and he four times more blessed than you and more pious than your son then I say to you do not suffer for your child. Cry not the name of one whose life was so miserly and so profane.
narada spoke:
63.1
63.5
O S
rinjaya. W
e hear of another monarch now gone named
Yayati son of
Nahusha. He slew hundreds of horses in sacrifice and held a hundred times the rituals that befit a king. A thousand times he staged the Rite of the Lotus and the Drink of Battle, the Night Passage and the Four Month Cycle. Whenever he was in need he sacrificed. His fire offer- ings were many and his
soma rituals rich with gifts. What- ever there was on earth that did not belong to the holy he reckoned up and rendered to them. He was so devout that
Sarasvati the holiest of rivers who already poured her rocky waters into his kingdom flowed for Yayati with milk and ghee. When the gods and demons donned their armour to
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