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SETUBANDHA submarine mountains sent rolling, 31 with their wings broken under their own weight.82
54. The mighty elephants, confronting the raging sea, tumbled into the waters, slipping off the slanting mountains, with their eyes fixed on the sea elephants, who in their turn accepled the challenge 33
55. Heavy with their massive flanks, the mountains plunged to the bottom, not so much because they were hurled down by the apes as because they were submerged under the weight of the splashing and surging waters of the sea.
56. The waves of the sea, carrying with them the huge fish overturned and stunned by the impact of the mountains, broke up high in the air as they dashed over the coastal mountains, hurling up the trees.
57. As a mountain tottered, with its summit thronged by a bewildered herd of elephants, half immersed in the waters, a pair of deities suddenly flew into the sky from a cave, as if it were the mountain's soul.
58. The mountains were held up by the apes with their arms, and the trees by the mountains, and the masses of clouds by the trees. It was not apparent whether the apes were building a causeway or measuring the sky.
59. Heaps of mountains, dashing against one another as they were vehemently thrown down, dropped into the sea, with their gem rocks swaying and falling; and the convulsions of the earth overwhelmed the nether regions, flattening out the drooping hoods of the great serpent34 crushed under the weight.
And, if the splitting waters of the ocean, tinged with red by the mountains that fell, with the masses of realgar crushed,
31. i.e., by the incoming mountains. 32. See 5.37, 51. 33. Lit. (being) accepted by the sea elephants. 34. See footnote 21.
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