287 THE PAPIA Sad Wisdom's sober livery,- - Thyself a thing baptised in tears. What mournful thoughts and memories Thy song awakes! It calleth forth The father's, mother's, lover's sighs For blighted heart and ruin'd hearth. For where is he, who never said- Pew kahan! Pew kahan! For absent love, or dear ones dead, Since this creation fair began? Thy voice reminds me how of yore, With Sati's relic on his back, Great Shiva roved from hill to shore,* Repeating thy sad coronach. How lovely Rati long bewailed Her lord, consumed by Rudra's eye, t
- King Daksha held a great yagna in which he invited all and
sundry with the exception of his son-in-law Shiva. Sati, Shiva's wife attended the yagna uninvited. Daksha heaped abuses on Shiva in the presence of his daughter Sati, who felt the insult to her husband so Shiva, coming to know of this, keenly that she expired on the spot went there and flinging her lifeless body accross his shoulder roamed about the world in a wild ecstasy of grief. The earth. groaning and trembling under the tread of his feet appealed to Vishnu for relief, who scattered the dead body of Sati with his Sudarshana Chakra. The scattered remains became holy relics and concecrated the spots on which they fell. Kama, the god of love, in one of his mischievous moods became desirous of trying the effect of his flowery arrow on Shiva who then sat in his meditations. Feeling a slight perturbation he opened his eyes and found before him the smiling god. His ire was incensed and he consumed him with a fire which emanated from his third eye i.e. the eye between the two eye-brows.
