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During a festival of very fine dancing, given by the Regent of Gianjar in honour of Princess Juliana's wedding, the rain fell every day in torrents, and in the final Bads (it was the death of Calya from the Bharata Yuddah) the tempests of heroic passion in the tent were echoed by the raging storm outside. I remember it as one of the most splendid I have seen, though the rain came through the roof, and on two occasions when the dance floor was floor a hole was actually dug among the spectators, and the earth spread thickly over the dance-ground, after the worst of the water had been swept away with hands and leaves. 'Me crowd, long-suffering as usual, only pressed a little closer together round the edge of the gaping hole which had been their seat. The Baris dancers, absorbed in celestial battles, were far removed from the mud round their feet.

Their glittering heads were in the sky, their fingers moved among their stoles as if they were touching clouds. But the servants, who always snatch their theme from their surroundings, made a portent of the rain, 'If it rains any more we shall win.' And later, as the leaves were blown in by the wind till the whole floor was covered with fallen leaves: 'The leaves are falling: he is beaten.' The comic section at the end was perhaps extended in a sort of bravado, as if the rain might be hypnotized into stopping. But the storm only grew stronger and stronger, and we were all driven out at last into the flood.

In the Sanskrit version of this story Ravana is returning from making war on Indra, and has actuall taken him prisoner. He has come to rest on the banks of the River Narmada, descending to bathe 'like a huge elephant into the Ganges', followed by his rakshasa host 'like so many moving mountains'.

He was dancing and singing before the golden Civa Linga which accompanied him everywhere, when his garlands were car ride away by the rising flood of water. Ravana sent messengers to see what was causing the sudden flood, Ld in the air they saw Arjuna Karttavirya, King of Mahismati, who was bathing with his wives in the stream, and in order to test the strength of his arms had put them round it and hemmed up its course, so that it overflowed in Ravana's direction. He is described in no less cyclopean terms than Ravana, for he too is a great rakshasa; 'huge as a Sala-tree, his hair floating on the water, drunken and with reddened eyes, surrounded by a thousand beautiful damsels, like an elephant by thousands of sheelephants.' A terrible storm of dust and wind and rain reflects the sympathy of Nature with the encounter between thc3e mighty demons, who belabour each other with weapons of huge dimensions. Eventually Ravana, invincible by gods and demons, is wounded suffic6tlj for the battle to end.

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