CHAPTER LXXVIII.
Description of the Universal Ocean.
Argument:—Rain waters running as rivers, and these meeting together and making an universal ocean.
Vasishtha continued:—The rain storm and falling hails and snows, shattered the surface of the earth to parts and parcels; and the violence of the waters was increasing, like the oppression of kings in Kali or last days of the world.
2. The rain water falling upon the stream of the etherial Ganges, make it run in a thousand streamlets, flowing with huge torrents, higher than the mountains of Meru and Mandara.
3. Here the waves rose to the path of the sun, and there the waters sank down and lay dull in the mountain caves; and then the dull element made the universal ocean, as when a fool is made the soveran lord of earth.
4. The great mountains were hurled down as straws, in the deep and broad whirlpools of water; and the tops of the huge surges, reached to the far distant sphere of the sun.
5. The great mountains of Meru and Mandara of Vindhya, Sahya and Kailása, dived and moved in as fishes and sea monsters; the melted earth set as its soil, and large snakes floated thereon like stalks of plant with their lotus like hoods.
6. The half burnt woods and floating plants, were as its moss and bushes, and the wet ashes of the burnt world, were as the dirty mud underneath the waters.
7. The twelve suns shone forth, as so many fullblown lotuses, in the large lake of the sky; and the huge and heavy cloud of Puskara, with its dark showers of rain, seemed as the blue lotus bed, filled with the sable leaves.
8. The raging clouds roared aloud from the sides of mountains, like the foaming waves of the ocean; and the sun and moon rolled like two pieces of sapphires over cities and towns (being darkened by the clouds).