53. The vault of the sky was filled with forests of long and large arrows, and with mountains of headless trunks with their hundred arms (as those of Briareus).
54. These as they leaped and jumped in the air, plucked the clouds and stars and the heavenly cars of the celestials with their numerous arms; and hurled their mountain like missile arms and clubs and arrows to the heavens.
55. The sky was filled with the broken fragments of the edifices, falling from the seven spheres of heaven, and their incessant fall raised a noise like the roaring of the diluvian clouds.
56. These sounds were resounded by the elephants of the deep (pátála); while the bird of heaven—Garuda, was snatching the gigantic demons as his prey.
57. The dread of the demons drove the celestial deities, the Siddhas and Sáddays and the gods of the winds, together with the Kinnaras, Gandharvas and Cháranas, from all their different quarters to one indistinct side. (There was no distinction of the sides in the chaotic state).
58. Then there blew a tremendous tornado like the all-destroying Boreas of universal desolation; laying waste the trees of the garden of paradise, and threatening to destroy the gods; while the thunders of heaven were splitting and breaking down the mountains flung to the face of the sky.
CHAPTER XXVII
ADMONITION OF BRAHMÁ.
Argument. The defeated Devas have recourse to Brahmá in their danger, who tells them the way of their averting it.
Vasishtha related:—As the war of the gods and Titans, was raging violently on both sides, and their bodies were pierced by the weapons of one another:—
2. Streams of blood, gushed out of their wounds like water-falls in the basin of Ganges; and the gods caught into the snares of the demigods, groaned and roared aloud like lions.