344 The Birth of Umé— [Juny, 
16. 
On his crowning lake, as the lotus-flowers grow, 
The seven blessed Risuis pluck some ere they blow, 
T’adorn the fifth heav’n : while the Sov’reign of day, 
As circling beneath, he with upward strong ray 
Peers o’er the calm waters, the rest ripes apace, 
And opes to full bloom their enchanting soft grace. 
St. 16. On his crowning lake.—The word tq or Jake occurring only as a member 
of the compound epithet of the lotus flowers, might be translated with equal gram- 
matical correctness, Jakes in the plural. If a single lake only be intended, which 
the epithet sq or crowning and other circumstances, seem to make by far the most 
probable interpretation, it can scarcely be any other than that called in modern 
Hindvi language Mansarour, from the Sanscrit qppaHatyaT i.e. the great lake 
MAnasa, situated in the centre of Him4laya, 31° N. 81° E.in an oblong basin of 15 
miles by 11, inclosed by the principal range to the south, part of the Kailasa range 
peculiarly sacred to Siva on the east, and other high mountains and table-land on 
the north and west: a lake frequented as a place of pre-eminent sanctity by Hin-~ 
du pilgrims,—but before Mr. Moorcroft’s visit scarcely known to Europeans. If 
however, with Mallinatha,we suppose several high-mountain lakes to be here meant, 
we may join with the Manasa the lake of Ravana westward of it, whence issues the 
great Satadru or Sutlej river, and others: particularly such as Hindu imagination or 
the report of probably mendacious pilgrims has fixed on the inaccessible summit of 
the high peak Bunder-pooch, (TAT TR Vanarapuch’ ha, the tail of the Monkey 
Hanuman.) See Asiatic Researches, vol. xiii. pp. 189, 190. What the poet however 
says here, or seems to say, concerning the lake Manasa,—he has elsewhere said of 
the Ganges, which had been commonly, but erroneously supposed to spring from it. 
For thus says Rama to Sita in the Raghu-vansa, Canto xiii. St. 51, when describing 
the mystic forest of the sage Atri. 
garfaaary aaraaiat | yaaa fearagar 
iy ~ ~ 5 
Vafaeargaearal faarad ayaqaataatat T 
“Thither, for the due ablution of sages whose wealth is austerity, has Anusfy4 
(the wife of Atri) turned the course of Ganges flowing through the three worlds, 
the diadem of the three-eyed Siva, her whose golden lotus-flowers are plucked by the 
hands of the seven Rishis.’’ 
But the intention of Calid4sa in this stanza, as his commentators truly say, is to 
close his description of Him4laya by a splendid instance of afawafa or Ayper- 
bole, such a one as, in the words of the rhetorical poet Dandi whom they quote, 
is wrastafaataen i 1. e. transcending the limits of the worlds. 
—vivida vis animi pervicit et extra 
Pervasit longe flammantia menia mundi. 
For not only does he state the highest summits, to rise above the planetary sphere, 
(to use the terms of the Hindu and the Ptolemaic astronomy,) so that the Sun can 
