Buddhacarita by Ven Asvaghosa - Ancient Buddhist Texts

Buddha-carita, or Life of Buddha - 97
‘Since the horse Kaṁthaka neighs, it must be that the prince is
coming.’
20. Then the women, who were fainting with sorrow, now in wild joy,
with their eyes rolling to see the prince, rushed out of the palace full
of hope, like flickering lightnings from an autumn cloud.
21. With their dress hanging down, and their linen garments soiled,
their faces untouched by collyrium and with eyes dimmed by tears;
dark and discoloured and destitute of all painting, like the stars in the
sky, pale-red with the ending of night;
22. With their feet unstained by red, and undecked by anklets, – their
faces without earrings, and their ears in their native simplicity, – their
loins with only nature’s fulness, and uncircled by any girdle, – and
their bosoms bare of strings of pearls as if they had been robbed.
23. But when they saw Chaṁdaka standing helpless, his eyes filled
with tears, and the horse, the noble women wept with pale faces, like
cows abandoned by the bull in the midst of the forest.
24. Then the king’s principal queen Gautamī, like a fond cow that has
lost her calf, fell bursting into tears on the ground with outstretched
arms, like a golden plantain-tree with trembling leaves.
25. Some of the other women, bereft of their brightness and with
arms and souls lifeless, and seeming to have lost their senses in their