23. And all things continue in their destined course, whether they that are conscious or those which are unconscious of these changes in nature; such are the appearance of meteors and portents in the sky, the roaring of clouds, the eclipses of the planets, and the trembling of the earth below.
24. The submarine fire sucks up the over flowing waters, of the seven great basins or oceans on earth; in the same manner as the all-destroying time, devours the creatures in all the different worlds.
25. All things are continually going on in their course, in the manner of the continued motion of the (sadágati) of the current air: Namely; all earth born worms moving on and returning into the bowels of the earth; the birds of the air are moving in and flying on all sides of the sky; the fishes are swimming and skimming all about the waters, the beasts returning to their caverns in earth and the hills, and such is the case with the inhabitants of all the continents and islands lying in the womb of this world.
CHAPTER LXVII.
Praise of Continued Practice or the Force of Habit.
Argument:—The sage’s visit to the stony-mansion and the nymph’s relations of the force of habit.
The Nymph continued:—If you, O sage, have any doubt in any part of my narration; then please to walk with me and see that mansion, and you will observe there many more wonders than what I have related.
2. Vasishtha said:—Upon this I said “well” and went on travelling with her in our aerial journey; as the fragrance of flowers flies with the winds, to aerial nothing in which they are both lost for ever.
3. As I passed far and afar, in the regions of air; I met with multitudes of etherial beings, and came to the sight of their celestial abodes.
4. Passing over the regions traversed by the celestials, in the upper and higher sphere of heaven; I arrived at blank and blanched sky, beyond the height and above the summit of the polar mountain.
5. I then passed amidst this etiolated vault and came out at last of it, as the fair moon appears under the white canopy of heaven; and beheld above me the bright belt of zodiac, containing the seven-fold golden spheres of the seven planets. Note. The Hindu astronomy does not reckon the earth as one of the moving planets.