Vamana Purana — Portents at Bali's Sacrifice, Shloka 99

Portents at Bali’s Sacrifice and the Kośakāra’s Son: The Power of Past Karma

Devanagari script

मां जग्राह सुचार्वङ्गी कराभ्यां चारुहासिनी चकारोपरि पीनाभ्यां कराभ्यां चारुहासिनी चकारोपरि पीनाभ्यां स्तनाभ्यां सा हि मां ततः

Transliteration

māṃ jagrāha sucārvaṅgī karābhyāṃ cāruhāsinī cakāropari pīnābhyāṃ karābhyāṃ cāruhāsinī cakāropari pīnābhyāṃ stanābhyāṃ sā hi māṃ tataḥ

Translation

“That lovely-limbed woman, smiling charmingly, took hold of me with her hands. Then she placed me upon (her) full breasts—she indeed did so to me.”

Speakers

• Narrator (first-person) describing Candrāvalī’s action toward him; frame-speaker not provided in excerpt.

Key Themes

• Bondage vs. release motif (implied by cage context)
• Erotic/poetic register within narrative
• Embodied action driving plot

Verse Rasa (Emotional Flavour)

{ "primaryRasa": "shringara", "secondaryRasa": "bibhatsa", "rasaIntensity": 0, "emotionalArcPosition": "", "moodDescriptors": [] }

FAQs

Who is the ‘mām’ (me) likely to be in this passage?

Given the immediately preceding mention of a ‘cage’ (pañjara), the first-person ‘me’ is most plausibly a bird or a small captive being kept in the cage. The handling described fits the common Purāṇic/kāvya motif of a woman taking a pet bird from its cage.

Why is the verse text repetitive (cāruhāsinī… cakāropari… repeated)?

The repetition suggests either (a) a manuscript/recensional duplication, (b) a scribal dittography, or (c) an uncritical conflation of two similar pādas. A critical edition would likely choose one occurrence; however, the semantic core remains clear: she grasped him and placed him upon her bosom.

How should this be treated in metadata for a geography-centered Purāṇa?

As a narrative micro-unit within a larger tīrtha framework: tag it for character-introduction, domestic setting, and ‘cage/bird’ motif, but do not assign sacred-geography entities here because none are explicitly named in these verses. Geographic entities should be extracted from adjacent verses that specify the tīrtha, river, or forest where this episode is situated.