56. The ominous tornadoes at the end of the kalpa period, overthrew the mountains and cities and forests, and overwhelmed the earth and all in a general ruin and confusion.
CHAPTER LXXII.
Description of Nirvána or Final Extinction.
Argument:—Brahmá’s suppression of his Respiration; his settling on the wings of air and his form of Virát.
Vasishtha continued:—Now the self-born Brahmá, having compressed his breath in his form of Virát (or the heart); the aerial or atmospheric air, which is borne on the wings of wind, lost its existence.
2. The atmospheric air, which is the very breath of Brahmá being thus compressed in his breast; what other air could there remain, to uphold the starry frame and the system of the universe.
3. The atmospheric air, being compressed with the vital breath of Brahmá; the perturbed creation (as described before), was about to come to its ultimate quietus.
4. The firmament being no more upheld by its support of the air, gave way to the fiery bodies of meteors, to fall down on earth, as starry flowers from the arbour of heaven.
5. The orbs of heaven, being unsupported by the intermediate air, were now falling on the ground; like the unfailing and impending fruits of our deserts, or the flying fates falling from above.
6. The gross desire or the crude will of Brahmá, being now at its end at the approach of dissolution; there was an utter stop, of the actions and motions of the siddhas, as that of the flame of fire before its extinction.
7. The world-destroying winds were winding in the air, like the thin and flying scraps of cotton; and then the siddhas fell down mute from heaven, after the loss of their strength and power of speech.