caṇḍīśatakam

A hundred and two verses by Banabhatta, the poet of the Harshacharita and the Kadambari, and every one of them turns on a single moment: the foot of the Goddess coming down on Mahisha. The conceits are worked over and over. Her limbs are chided as though for a lover's quarrel while the foot is already on the demon's head; the buffalo, hearing her anklet, takes the foot for the Vindhya and rubs his shoulder against it, so that it takes his life out of pure ignorance; the blood from the trident wound is asked whether it is the tongues of Death, or the reddened paths of the sky, or the three twilights come to praise. In one verse Kumara takes the horn-tip caught at his mother's anklet and wears it as an earring in place of a fallen lotus bud. Each verse ends in a blessing on the hearer.