Sudeva Discovers Damayanti in Chedi

A brahmana named Sudeva was among those who set out. In his search, he came to the beautiful city of Chedi and saw Vidarbha's daughter in the king's palace. She was with a woman named Sunanda, and it was the sacred time for the king to say his prayers. Only a little bit of her great beauty could be seen — like the luminosity of the sun engulfed in a net of haze. She was extremely thin and dirty. But Sudeva looked at the large-eyed woman and began to use different arguments to deduce who she was. He spoke to himself, working through what he saw. "This lady's beauty is exactly like what I have seen before. After seeing her, I have accomplished my objective today. She is like Shri and brings pleasure to the worlds. Her face is like the full moon. She is dark. Her breasts are beautifully rounded. Through her radiance, this goddess dispels darkness in all directions. Her eyes are beautiful, like the lotus or the palasha flower. She looks like Manmatha's Rati — the goddess of love herself." He saw the fall in her condition and read it as a sign. "Because of destiny and the adversity of fate, she has been dislodged from the lake of Vidarbha. Her limbs are encrusted with dirt and mud, exactly like the stalk of a lotus. Or she is like the night of the full moon when the moon has been swallowed up by Rahu. She is miserable and despondent because of sorrow for her husband, like the course of a river that has run dry. She looks like a pond of lotuses devastated by the trunks of elephants, with the flowers decayed and the birds scattered in fear." He thought of what she deserved and what she had lost. "She is delicate and her limbs are of noble lineage. She should be in a house that is a store of jewels. But she burns in the heat like the uprooted stalk of a lotus. She has the qualities of beauty and generosity. However, though she deserves them, she is not adorned in ornaments. She is like a sliver of the moon in the sky, when it is covered by dark clouds. She is deprived of objects of desire. She has been separated from her loved ones and distanced from her relatives. The miserable one sustains her body, in the hope of seeing her husband again." He arrived at the core of it. "The husband is the supreme ornament for a woman, even if she has no other ornaments. Without him, even a beautiful woman does not seem beautiful. Without her, Nala must be facing great difficulties. How does he hold up his body, without immersing himself in sorrow?" He thought of her future. "When will this radiant one reach the other shore, overcoming this unhappiness? When will this faithful one unite with her husband, like Rohini with the moon? The Nishadha will certainly be delighted when he gets her back. The king who has lost his kingdom will regain it and the earth with it. Nishadha deserves Vidarbha's daughter and the black-eyed one deserves him. They are similar in conduct and age. They are similar in lineage." And he thought of his own duty. "It is my duty to comfort the wife. I will console the one with a face like that of the full moon. She has never before witnessed the misery she is suffering now. Because of her sorrow, she is now reflecting all the time." Through different signs and arguments, he arrived at this conclusion: the woman before him was Damayanti.