64. There the learned and saintly persons, were carried away with the ignorant, in the shape of dead bodies and devoid of their pride; and the cities of the gods Brahmá, Vishnu, and Indra, were swept away, all broken and crushed to pieces.
65. The bodies of weak women, were washed and carried over by the waves, and there was no body left to save them from the grasp of death; which devoured them altogether under his horrid jaws.
66. The floods which flowed at first with their serpentine course into the caves of mountains, overflooded them to their tops at last; and the cities of the gods, which floated at first as boats upon the waters on mountain tops, were hurled to the bottom at last.
67. The gods and giants and all other beings, together with their residences in heaven, and the continents and mountains on earth, were all submerged and shattered like lotus-beds by the waters; and the three worlds were turned to an universal ocean and all their grandeur and splendour were swallowed up by time, together with all the sovran powers of earth and heaven.
CHAPTER CXXXX.
Workings of Imagination.
Argument:—The sage’s situation at the end of the Deluge, and his description of the reproduction of creation.
The Huntsman said:—Tell me sir, how a sage as yourself, could be exposed to that state (of the dream or delusion of the Deluge); and why were you not delivered from your meditation.
2. The sage replied:—At the end of the Kalpa age, all kinds of beings meet with their destruction; namely, there is a termination of the erroneous forms of the worlds, and a cessation of the luminous bodies in the heaven.
3. Sometimes the dissolution takes place gradually at the end of a kalpa; and at others it comes on all on a sudden, with a simultaneous turmoil and disorganization on all sides.
4. So when there was an outbreak of waters on every side, and the gods were repairing to Brahmá the first cause of all; for redress from the impending danger, they were all swept away by the overflowing tide.