24. The burning piles and their flashing flames and flying sparks, and the fiery winds scorching the trees and herbage; give this place the appearance of the play ground, of the gods of wind and fire, and of the sons of sun—Yama and Saturn.
25. Thus I saw the funeral ground full of terrors, and covered with skeletons of half-burnt bodies and putrid carcasses also; it is infested by hungry dogs and howling jackals, and other voracious beasts, and the ravenous ravens and vultures. It is a place where the Vetála—demons and Pisácha—hobgoblins, revel with fearful shrieks and jarring sounds.
26. I beheld there the biers of dead bodies, borne by their mourning friends, with loud cries and lamentations that filled the air all about. I saw the beasts and birds, that tore their entrails and arteries, yet moist with blood, and I saw the ground strewn over with half burnt logs of wood and bushes.
27. In some places the glaring pyres, gave a gloomy light, and in others the tufts of hair, were heaped as spots of clouds; somewhere the ground was besmeared with blood, and looked like a lurid sheet of cloth; and elsewhere the clouds were roaring, as the setting sun went down the western hill (or horizon).
CHAPTER CXX.
Description of Various objects on all sides.
Argument:—Prolusion on the winds and the forest trees and wild bees; then on celestial nymphs, birds &c.
The companions continued:—Thus the loving pair after taking to one another in the aforesaid manner; began to sip their delicious wine. And now attend, O lotus eyed lord to the other things of things of this place.
2. Lo, there the winds, shaking the plantain leaves and clusters of their flowers, and blowing to all sides, with the dust of various sorts of flowers, with which they have adorned themselves.
3. There the breezes are blowing, loaded with odours exhaled by the flowers of the forest; and there the gentle zephyrs are wafting the perfumes, which they have stolen from the locks of their favourite fairies.
4. Here are the blasts blowing from the salt sea on the south; and driving as fastly as the stern lion rushes into the fastness of woods and mountain caves; and as forcibly, as the fierce giants attacked the gods on the top of Mount Meru.