CHAPTER CXXXIX. Description of the Dissolution of the World.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. As I was halting on a hill covered with foam and froth; immediately I was run over by a rush of water, as a man is overtaken by his enemy.
41. Being then ingulfed in the water, and carried away by the waves and current wheresoever they pleased, I lost the sight of whatever I was seeing, and was greatly dejected in my mind.
42. At this moment there, I had come to know by my reminiscence, that ＜a＞ certain muni will lecture to the public, the Vasishtha’s address of Ráma hereafter.
43. I remembered my former state of holy trance (samádhi) and exclaimed; O, had I been an ascetic in another world.
44. I have entered into the body of another person, in order to see the sights in his dreaming; and all that I am now seeing (of this flood and others), is no more than a dream, and mere error of the mind and falsehood.
45. It is from our habitual bias in the present scene, that I believed these falsehoods as true in me; and though I was troubled to see myself to be borne away by the flood in my dream; yet I feel myself happy at present to find, it was but the unreality of a dream.
46. What I saw as water, was the whirling eddy in the ocean of the universal deluge, and as false as the water of mirage; and the hills and woods, and the cities and towns, that were swept away by the flood, were as false as any visual deception.
47. There were the gods and aerials, men and women, and huge snakes also borne away by the flood; and the great cities and mansions of the rulers of men (i.e. royal edifices), all floating upon the waters.
48. I saw the mountain merged in and mixed up with the waters, and being battered and shattered by the waves; I saw the approaching dissolution of the world, and thus considered within myself.
49. There is even the god Siva with his three eyes, swimming upon and swept away as a straw by the waves: O fie for shame! that there is nothing impossible for the fates.
50. Fragments of houses floating upon the waters, looked like lotus flowers flaunting under the sun-beams.
51. It was astonishing to see the bodies of Gandharvas, Kinnaras, and of men and Nágas, floating on the waters, like swarms of bees fluttering over lotus-beds in the lake.
52. The fragments of the splendid edifices of the gods and demigods and others, decorated with the ornamental works of the vidyádharas, were floating like golden vessels on the wide expanse of the ocean.
53. The god Indra was floating on the glassy water, as if he were lying in his crystal palace; he mounted over the waves, as if he rode on his elephant; and was swinging on the surges as upon his cradle.
54. The waves rising to the sky, were washing the faces of the stars, and the winds were scattering them all about; as they drop down the flowers of the garden of Eden on the mansions of the gods, and as men strew the ground with fried rice.
55. Waves as high as mountains rose to the sky, and then their breakers flying aloft like stones flung by ballistas, fell upon the lotus seat of Brahmá, and turned it about with the god also, who was sitting upon it in his deep meditation.
56. The clouds were roaring aloud with deep and appalling thunder, and the billows were flashing like frightful lightnings in the air; elephants, horses, and ferocious lions were wandering in the atmosphere, and forests as large as the earth, were floating in the sky.
57. The dark blue waves of over-flowing waters, pushed with such violent force against one another; as if the god of destruction was propelling them one after another to the act, of utter annihilation (or as the powers of destruction were propelling one another).
58. The waves were carrying down into the deep, the gods, men, and Nágas, together with their abodes in heaven, earth and the regions below.
59. The irresistible flood having flooded over all sides, of earth, heaven and the infernal region, the bodies of the gods and demigods, were all floating together like shoals of fishes; and their heavenly cars and vehicles were swimming over on the surface of the waters, as in the field of battle.
60. The body of dark blue waters, resembled the azure form of Krishna; and their foaming froths, likened the milk white calves about him. (The text is utterly meaningless).
61. The waves pushed one another, with the burber sound for drowning every thing; and the females both of the gods and giants were heard to wail aloud with cries of hola and howling. (Hola is the exclamation of wailing, corresponding with waílá in Persian).
62. The loud cries raised by all, at the falling down of their houses, were resounded by the waters on all sides; and the clouds roving over the rolling waves, appeared as the covers of fallen and floating domes.
63. Ah it was piteous to behold, how the whirling waters of whirlpools, hurled down even the gods into the deep; and how Indra, Yama, and Kubera, breathed out their last breaths in the form of flying and flimsy clouds.
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.