Menaka Menaca : apsarā sent to seduce the sage Vishwāmitra; succeeding in this mission she became the mother of Shakuntalā.
... creatures great and small, was getting married. The animals were running, for they did not want to miss the great event. The lion was taking them to the Himalayas. Uma, the daughter of Himavat and Menaka, was the Bride. Hosts from heaven and hosts from hell had come trooping. Bhutas and Pramathas' had escorted their Lord from Kailash, dancing and beating skull drums and rattling bones. From the ...
... Eurydice (Priyumvada); the roles of the Savitri story are here reversed, for it is the husband who by the power of his love regains his partner. Ruru, Sage Brigu's grandson, and Priyumvada, the Apsara Menaca's daughter, fall in love and marry. They lead the life of love's fulfilment, but the joy Page 418 is short-lived. Priyumvada is bitten by a snake and dies. When the first shock ...
... the gods in heaven, missing Urvasie more and more, resolve to break the romance and get her back: They in colossal council marble, said To that bright sister whom she had loved best, "Menaca!" crying "how long shall one man Divide from heaven its most perfect bliss? Go down and bring her back.. ." 13 By means of a trick, the denizens of heaven, the Gandharvas, arrange to... aesthetically satisfying. Here we have no more than a catalogue of names, and yet the result is exquisitely exotic poetry: Page 106 So danced they numberless as dew-drops gleam, Menaca, Misracayshie, Mullica, Rumbha, Nelabha, Shela, Nolinie, Lolita, Lavonya and Tilottama, - Many delightful names.... 20 Again, doesn't an expanded simile like the following reproduce... But Sri Aurobindo has transformed the original tale, and Love and Death sweeps on its course with a precipitancy all its own. Ruru, Sage Bhrigu's grandson, loves Priyumvada, daughter of Menaca the nymph and the Gandharva King. It is a beautiful Adam-Eve idyll out of an Indiana Garden of Eden (the serpent, of course, not far away): In woodlands of the bright and early world When ...
... became a great Rishi like his fathers, but in his youth he was engrossed with his love for a beautiful girl whom he had made his wife, the daughter of the Gundhurva King, Chitroruth, by the sky-nymph Menaca; an earlier sister therefore of Shacountala. Their joy of union was not yet old when Priyumvada perished, like Eurydice, by the fangs of a snake. Ruaru inconsolable for her loss, wandered miserable ...
... Rossetti's fivefold symphony of names: Page 318 Cecily, Gertrude , Magdalen, Margaret, and Rosalys — or Sri Aurobindo's recital of a yet longer liquidity of nomenclature: Menaca, Misracayshie, Mullica, Rambha, Nelabha, Shela, Nolinie, Lolita, Lavonya and Tillottama... Of course, Rossetti is speaking of the "five handmaidens" of "Lady Mary" in the heavenly groves ...
... and Rosalys. Sri Aurobindo's recital of the list of Apsara-companions of the peerless Urvasie, dancer in the courts of Indra, is at a yet longer liquidity of proper-nouned loveliness: Menaca, Misracayshie, Mullica, Page 242 Rambha, Nelabha, Shela, Nolinie, Lolita, Lavonya and Tillottama... It is possible to be intoxicated with such Melopoeia, just as Marcel Proust ...
... his legates come and go; His vernal jurisdiction to bare Hell Extends not. This last world resists his power Youthful, anarchic. Here will he enlarge Tumult and wanton joys?" The voice replied: "Menaca momentary on the earth, Heaven's Apsara by the fleeting hours beguiled Played in the happy hidden glens; there bowed To yoke of swift terrestrial joys she bore, Immortal, to that fair Gundhurva ...
... sister, the diction of each tongue has its revealing individuality. The timid, warm-hearted Rumbha, easily despondent, full of quick outbursts of eagerness and tenderness is other than the statelier Menaca with her royal gift of speech and her high confidence. Sahajunya is of an intenser, more silent, less imaginative, more practical type than either of these. It is she who gives Pururavus the information ...
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