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Mango trees and wood-apples, jackfruits, sāls, rose-apples, beleric myrobalans,
chebulic myrobalans and emblic myrobalans, sacred figs and jujubes;
and here are lovely timbaru trees, banyans, and kapitthana trees;
the madhukas, sweet as honey, drip, and udumbara figs hang ripe down low;
there are pārevata and bhaveyya trees, and grape-vines sweet as honey;
and faultless honey is there, which they take for themselves and eat.
Here some mangoes stand in blossom, others stand with blossom shed;
some are green and some are ripe, and both are the color of a frog's back.
And here a man, standing beneath, may gather the ripe mangoes;
green and ripe alike, they are supreme in color, scent, and savour.
Exceedingly marvelous is this to me — the cry of wonder "hiṅ!" rises in me:
like a dwelling of the devas it shines, the very likeness of Nandana.
Beleric myrobalans and coconut palms, in the mighty forest of date-palms,
stand like garlands strung together; they show like the crests of banners.
With blossoms of many hues, like the sky bestrewn with stars,
the kuṭaja, the kuṭṭha and tagara, and the pāṭalī trees stand in flower;
the punnāgas and mountain punnāgas and the koviḷāras stand in flower.
Uddhālaka trees and soma trees, agaru and bhalliya trees in plenty,
pattajīva trees and kukkuṭa trees and asana trees are here in flower.
Kuṭaja, salaḷa, and nīpa trees, kosamba, labuja, and dhava trees,
and sāl trees are in flower there, like heaped straw on a threshing-floor.
Not far from it lies a lotus pond, on a delightful stretch of ground,
mantled over with lotuses and water-lilies, as in the Nandana of the devas.
And here the cuckoos, sweet of voice, drunk with the nectar of flowers,
make that wood resound when the trees have blossomed in their season.
Honey drips from the flower-filaments upon lotus-leaf after lotus-leaf;
and here the breezes blow, from the south and from the west.
The hermitage lies strewn with the pollen of lotus filaments;
and here are large water-chestnuts, and sasādiya and pasādiya grain (self-sown rice).
Fish and turtles of many kinds throng here, gliding to and fro;
honey flows from the lotus-rhizomes, milk and ghee from the lotus-stalks;
fragrant blows that wood, astir with manifold scents.
That wood, with its fragrance and its flowering boughs, seems to bid glad welcome;
the bees, at the scent of the blossoms, keep up their hum on every side.
And here are birds, winged creatures many and of varied hue,
delighting together with their mates, warbling each to each:
the nandikā ("rejoice!"), the jīvaputtā ("live, son!"), the jīvaputtā piyā ca no ("live, son, dear to us!"),
and the piyā puttā piyā nandā ("dear sons, dear delight!") — birds that make their homes by the lotus pond.
The trees stand like garlands strung together; they show like the crests of banners,
well woven with blossoms of many colors, as though by skillful hands.
It is there that King Vessantara dwells together with his children,
wearing the guise of a brahmin, with hooked staff, the gear of the fire-offering, and matted hair;
clad in skins, he lies upon the ground and does homage to Jātaveda, the sacred fire.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.