20. Jyeshtha Sarmá said:—Be victorious, ye goddesses! that have come here to dispel our sorrow; as it is inborn in the nature of good people, to deliver others from their distress.
21. After he had ended, the goddesses addressed him gently and said, tell us the cause of your sorrow, which has made you all so sad.
22. Then Jyeshtha Sarmá and others related to them one by one their griefs, owing to the demise of the Bráhman pair.
23. They said:—Know O goddess pair! there lived here a Bráhman and his wife, who had been the resort of guests and a support of the Bráhminical order.
24. They were our parents, and have lately quitted this abode; and having abandoned us with all their friends and domestic animals here, have departed to heaven, and left us quite helpless in this world.
25. The birds there sitting on the top of the house, have been continually pouring in the air, their pious and mournful ditties over the dead bodies of the deceased.
26. There the mountains on all sides, have been lamenting their loss, in the hoarse noise (of the winds) howling in their caverns, and shedding showers of their tears in the course of the streams issuing from their sides.
27. The clouds have poured their tears in floods of rainwater, and fled from the skies; while the quarters of the heavens have been sending their sighs in sultry winds all around.
28. The poor village people are wailing in piteous notes, with their bodies mangled by rolling upon the ground, and trying to yield up their lives with continued fasting.
29. The trees are shedding their tears every day in drops of melting snow, exuding from the cells of their leaves and flowers, resembling the sockets of their eyes.