Chapter 4 of 43 · Rudra Samhita - Sati Khanda · Overall chapter 56 of 464
Kama's Marriage
Daksha, as promised, gives his sweat-born daughter Rati to Kama as a wife. Her beauty is described at length, and the two are married amid great festivities - Kama, besotted, forgets entirely about Brahma's curse rather than confronting it.
Narada said
Brahma, you have narrated the nectar of Shiva's pastimes. What happened next?
Brahma replied
Shambhu went to his abode and I vanished. Daksha, remembering my words, said to Kandarpa: "She was born from my body, beautiful and endowed with qualities like yours. Accept her as wife; she will be your companion and obey you by dharma." She had been born of beads of sweat on his body, and he gave her the name Rati and placed her before Kandarpa. Smara married her and was delighted. Madana looked at his auspicious wife: fair, with a radiance like lightning, cheerful, doe-eyed, with intoxicating sideways glances. At her eyebrows he doubted: "Vidhatri has set these there to surpass my bow." Seeing the speed of her glances he lost faith in the speed of his own weapons; inhaling her fragrant breath he gave up faith in the Malaya breeze; looking at her moon-like face he saw no difference between it and the moon. The text describes her at length: golden budlike breasts, a slender necklace down to the navel, a deep navel, red-fruit lips, a slender waist, golden body, thighs like plantain trunks, red-tinged feet, red-nailed hands, round slender fingers, arms like lotus stalks, a mass of hair like blue cloud, a twelve-ornamented body and the sixteen arts of adornment, as beautiful as Lakshmi, bewildering all worlds and lighting the ten directions. Madana, besotted, forgot the terrible curse and so did not tell Daksha about it. There were great festivities. Daksha was more delighted than anyone; Kama's miseries were gone. Smara with Rati was radiant like an evening cloud with lightning; as a yogi clasps knowledge, Rati's consort embraced Rati; and Rati, having got her excellent husband, shone like Lakshmi with Hari, like the full moon.
Retold in our own words from Bibek Debroy's English translation of the Shiva Purana (Penguin Classics). Names, numbers and the order of events follow the source.