25. The fond parents were much more mutually attached in their hearts and minds, owing to their joint care and affection for their lads, and seemed as they were the one and same person in two different bodies.
26. The two boys of graceful forms, remained also pleased with one another in the same hermitage; and moved about as two bees, over the same bed of lotuses in the same lake.
27. They attained their youth after passing their boyhood and shone forth in a short time, as the two luminaries of the sun and moon rising together.
28. The aged parents then left their infirm bodies, and went to heaven like a pair of birds quitting their broken nest. (Nest is in sanskrit nidas, Lat. nidus. Plato compares the departing soul, to the flight of a bird from its nest.)
29. The demise of the parents made the youths as dejected as the drooping lotus in a dried-up channel; and the vigour of their bodies now gave way to their want of energy.
30. They discharged the funeral rites, and remained long in their mourning; under the sad accidents of life, which are unavertible even by the good and great.
31. After performance of the obsequies, they were so overpowered by their grief and sorrow, that they continued to wail over their memory with piteous cries and tears. They sat silent and inactive as pictures in a painting, with their melancholy countenances and hearts heavy with sobs and sighs.
CHAPTER LXVI.
The Transitoriness of Life and Evanescence of World by Things.
Argument. Speech of Bhása, on the vain sorrows and griefs of unenlightened Minds.
Vasishtha continued:—The two sorrowful hermits continued in the observance of their rigorous austerities, until their bodies where emaciated as two withered trees in the forest.