178 also ancient groups of thirty (or thirty-three) gods who typify heaven (27) — a condition after death which the Indians consider inferior to liberation from the cycle of re-birth. Stanzas 27, 33, 41 and 42 suggest the doctrine that one^ last living thought determines one^ fate after death. 1 hope the complex allusion of 50 is tolerably clear in my translation. The story is that the gods churned the ocean for the nectar of immortality within it. They used Mount Mandara as their churning stick and a giant serpent as the rope; Visnu as a tortoise made his back the pivot. Thirteen treasures, including Laksmi, wine, and the moon, came out of the ocean, but so did a deadly poison which would have destroyed the world had not Siva drunk it, thus staining his throat blue. The ocean prevented the equally dangerous submarine fire from emerging. Incidentally, Ocean^ retention of the submarine fire is also alluded to in the last verse of the eighth canto of Kalidasa^ great poem the Kw^trasamh'hava^ and its occurence in the last verse of our poem sounds to me like an echo, which would support the traditional view that the eighth is the last canto which is really by Kalidasa. A few Sanskrit literary conventions about nature also require explanation. The michetia campaka (1) is a tree with a fragrant yellow flower. The aSoka tree (14) (sayaoa indica) is said to bloom when touched by the foot of a beautiful woman; this makes the metaphor doubly apt. I hope other conceits common in Sanskrit poetry can be understood from the translation; for example, in stanza 2 he shivers because the rays of the moon are cold as the sun^ are hot. Moonbeams are the alleged diet of the oako^a bird (12), a kind of partridge (perdix rufa). Finally, to give an example of how the original sounds and how I treat it, here is the first stanza in Sanskrit with a word-for-word literal translation. Sanskrit and English are so different in structure that by itself this would be unintelligible, but my verse translation clarifies the construction. Sanskrit compounds I indicate in the English by hyphens, and what is one word in Sanskrit is run together as one in English. Adyapi tarn kanaka-campaka- dama - gaurim Now even her gold -campaka- garland-yellow Phullapavinda-vadanam tanu - roma - rajim (having-a-) blown- lotus - face (having-a-) slender-body hair-line Suptotthitam madana - vi'hvata -satasanglm Slept-upstood (having-) [god of love"1 perturbed- with langor-limbs love - ^ Vidyam pramada - galitam •i'oa czntayami.. Learning carelessness- slipped like I think of.