Setubandha

SR No.: 001384
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1976
Total Pages: 812
Language: English, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_English & Literature
File Size: 14 MB

Page 237

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SETUBANDHA 33. Blocked by a mountain dropped on the beach, the channels of the rivers by which they entered the sea became, in fact, outlets by which the waters flowed backwards.
34. The mountains, even though released by the apes with the peaks downwards, turned over, being heavy at the base, and dropped on Nala's Way,18 with the peaks upwards, exactly in the position in which they were uprooted.
35. The lions, 19 tossed by the sea elephants, shook up the latter's faces, firmly thrusting their claws into them; while their mane moved about the temples (of the sea elephants), which were severely mangled and swallowed up in their mouths.
36. The infuriated wild elephants (on the mountains) became aware that their massive trunks, stretched out at the smell of their adversaries, the sea elephants, were torn away by the latter, only when the wounds came into contact with the briny water of the sea.
37. Having built a portion of the causeway, the apes flew aloft, and dragged down the submarine mountains as they flew out of the sea, grasping their wings with both their hands.20
38. With the streaming mass of his hair ruffled up at the moment, Nala, too, put the causeway together as he lifted the mountains from the outstretched hands of the apes with his hands curved beside his hips.
39. When a cavity at the bottom, caused by the numerous mountains (dropped by the apes), was discovered in the heaving sea, it was covered up by a single mountain, larger in extent, and fixed firm (by Nala).
40. As the apes fixed each mountain that reached to the bottom of the sea, Nala, planting his foot thereon, built the causeway further and further.
18. The causeway is thus designated in honour of Nala. 19. Those tumbling off the mountains into the sea.
20. See 5.51 for a similar picture. Here, the winged mountains try to escape from the sea to avoid being crushed by the causeway.
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