Then it came to pass one day, while they were hunting all together, that many birds had been killed; and she called to the children, "Little ones, bring me quickly some feathers!" And they came to her with their hands full; and she laid the feathers upon their arms and upon her own shoulders, and shrieked to them, "Fly! ye are of the race of birds, ye are the Wind's children!"
Forthwith their garments fell from them; and, being changed into wild gulls, mother and children rose in the bright icy air, circling and circling, higher and higher, against the sky. Thrice above the weeping father they turned in spiral flight, thrice screamed above the peaks of glimmering ice, and, sweeping suddenly toward the far south, whirred away forever.
[TALES FROM INDIAN AND BUDDHIST BUDDHIST LITERATURE]
[THE MAKING OF TILOTTAMA]
Which is told of in the holy "Mahabharata," written by the blessed Rishi Krishna-Dvaipayana, who composed it in twenty-four thousand slokas[1], and who composed six millions of slokas likewise. Of the latter are three millions in the keeping of the gods; and one million five hundred thousand in the keeping of the Gandharvas, who are the musicians of Indra's Heaven; and one million four hundred thousand in the keeping of the Pitris, who are the ghosts of the blessed dead; and one hundred thousand in the keeping of men.... And the guiltiest of men who shall hear the recital of the "Mahabharata" shall be delivered from all his sins; neither sickness nor misfortune shall come nigh him.
Now I shall tell you how it happened that the great gods once became multiple-faced and myriad-eyed by reason of a woman's beauty, as the same is recounted in the Book of Great Weight—in the Mahabharata.
In ancient years there were two Daityas, twin brothers sprung from the race of the Asouras, the race of evil genii; and their names were Sounda and Oupasounda. Princes they were born; cruel and terrible they grew up, yet were ever one in purpose, in thought, in the pursuit of pleasure, or in the perpetration of crime.