19. This shady forest afforded me a little joy, after my pains in the dry and dreary desert; as a lingering disease seems more desirable to men, than the pains attending on death.
20. I then got under the shade of Jambíra tree, and felt myself as pleased, as when the sage Markandeya got upon the top of the mountain at the great deluge. (The Ararat of Noah?).
21. Then I took shelter under the creepers, descending from its branches, as the scorching top of a mount, finds a temporary shadow under the umbrage of a dark cloud.
22. As I was hanging down with holding the pendant roots in my hand, the horse slided away from underneath me, as the sins of a man glide under him, that puts his trust in the sacred Ganges streams. (The purificatory power of Ganges water, resides even in the belief of its holiness, and does not consist only in bathing in it).
23. Fatigued with my travel of the live-long day in the dreary waste, I took my refuge under this tree; as a traveller rests under the shelter of a kalpa tree at the setting of the sun.
24. All this business of the world was stopped, as the sun went down to rest in the western hills. (The Hindu ritual prescribing no duty for the night consisting of three watches—triyama rajaní).
25. As the shade of night overspread the bosom of the universe, the whole forest below betook itself to its nightly rest and silence. (The vegetable creation was known to sleep at night by the Hindu sages).
26. I reposed myself in the grassy hollow of a branch of that tree, and rested my head on the mossy bed like a bird in its nest. (Primeval men slept in the hollow of trees like birds, for fear of rapacious animals in the caves of the earth below, as also in the caverns of upland hills and mountains).
27. I remained there as insensible as one bitten by a snake, and as a dead body that has lost its past remembrance. (Sleep and death are akin to each other—hypnos kai thanatos didumo adelpho). I was as impotent as a sold slave; and as helpless as one fallen in a dark ditch or blind pit. Bought slaves krita-dásas and their loss of liberty, were in vogue from the earliest times in India. (अन्ध कुप-अन्ध-कुया = a blind pit).
28. I passed that one night as a long Kalpa in my senselessness; and I thought I was buffeting in the waves like the seer—Markandeya at the great deluge. (i.e. The body was insensible in the state of sleep; but the mind was active as in a dream, which makes an age of a moment).