so by the very disposition and qualities of that son himself. For he
was so marvellously beautiful, that every time they saw him, they could
hardly believe their own eyes, and were ready to abandon the body out of
joy. And in the intoxication of delight they gave him the name of
Atirupa,[15] which was no more than he deserved. And he became a byword
and a wonder in the world, till the heart of his mother almost broke
with the swelling of its own pride. For nothing like him had ever been
seen by anybody, even in a dream, since his beauty did not in the least
resemble that of other men, but hovered as it were half-way between one
sex and the other, as if the Creator when he made him, unable to decide,
whether to make of him a man or a woman, had combined, by some miracle
of omnipotence and skill, the fascinations of the two. For though he was
tall, and strong, yet strange! his body and his limbs were rounded, and
delicately shaped, and slender, with soft and tender hands and feet that
were almost too small, even for a girl: and as he moved, he fell as if
by accident into attitudes that as it were imitated unconsciously the
careless grace of Shri[16], caught unaware when she thinks that there is
nobody to look at her, and carved by a cunning sculptor in stone upon a
temple wall; so that the eyes of all followed him as if against their
will, drawn to him by an involuntary admiration that they could not
understand, not realising that in his case only, the beauty of their own
sex was reinforced, and as it were, reduplicated with the magic of a
spell, by the mysterious and additional fascination of the other. And
his face was so strange that whoever saw it, started, and fell, after a
little while, into a kind of dream. And yet this was not merely by
reason of its beauty, though that beauty was excessive, resembling a
vision seen suddenly in the water by a Dryad, musing at midnight by a
moonlit pool, with eyes that resembled the reflections of the shadows of
the lotuses, and eyebrows that met together, in the middle of his brow,
each drawn exactly in imitation of the other, like a lotus-fibre half in
and half out of water, and lips that were almost too red, resembling
that love-sick nymph's own pair of _bimba_ lips, mirrored[17] in the
clear black water, and dying to be kissed by others like themselves.
But wonderful! the Creator had put into his face some ingredient of
recollection, so that without knowing why, every beholder fou