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 254

SETUBANDHA
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93
50. It was the common abode of the maidens held captive by the demons,35 and full of dismal cries. It concealed the regions of the sky from view. Its flanks were composed of sunstones; and it touched the Sun, and harboured darkness (in its caves).
51. It stood filling the world with its expanse, the world that could not be filled by Vişnu36 while wresting the earth from the demon Bali; by the clouds in the season of rains; and by the oceans at the epoch of destruction.
52. The sun, with its orb vanishing from sight, being enveloped in the forest fires on the adjoining peaks of the mountain, seemed to be setting, with its reddish rays shooting up through the flames.
53. It endured the heat of the submarine fire, and the heavy blows of the waves of the sea, eroding its slopes, as if for the sake of its streams that were loth to quit their paternal home.37
54. At night it carried the reflections of the young moon on each block of ruby, as if they were a series of hoof-marks left by the horses of the Sun.
55. It was surrounded with slabs of gold, lying uneven, and covered with groves of high-grown creepers here and there, as if they were circles of light intersected by shadows.
56. It bore on its slopes woods that were beyond the range of the sun, with the shadows deepening above, and the serpents abiding at the top for fear of the heat of the sun.38
57. The lofty flanks of the mountain, dented by the macelike tusks of the elephants of the gods, declared the size of their mouths through the wide space between the marks left by the tusks.
58. Here the branches of the Pārijāta tree, borne by the celestial elephants for a long while, were discarded after they
35. Cf. verse 47. 36. Vişnu as Trivikrama.
37. The streams are figured as the daughters of the mountain married to the ocean. The delay in settling in their new home makes the angry son-in-law chastise the father with the waves and the submarine fire.
38. See verse 19.