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moon in autumn, saw the milk-ocean, equalling in beauty the breast of Lakshmi, which is white like the mass of moon-beams. Its waters increased in all four directions, and raged with ever-changing and moving, excessively high waves. It presented a splendid and pleasant spectacle as it rushed to and from the shore with its wind-raised, changeable, and moving billows, its tossing waves, and its rolling, splendid, transparent breakers. From it issued camphor-white foam under the lashing (tails) of great porpoises, fishes, whales, and other monsters of the deep1. Its agitated waters were in great uproar, occasioned by the vortex Gangâvarta, which the vehemence and force of the great rivers produced; they rose, rushed onwards and backwards, and eddied. (43)
LIVES OF THE GINAS.
12. Then she saw a celestial abode excelling among the best of its kind, like the lotus (among flowers). It shone like the morning sun's disk, and was of a dazzling beauty. Its thousand and eight excellent columns (inlaid with) the best gold and heaps of jewels diffused a brilliant light like a heavenly lamp, and the pearls fastened to its curtains glittered. It was hung with brilliant divine garlands, and decorated with pictures of wolves, bulls, horses, men, dolphins, birds, snakes, Kinnaras, deer, Sarabhas, Yaks, Samsaktas 2, elephants, shrubs, and plants. There the Gandharvas performed their concerts, and the din of the drums of the gods,
1 The original has timingila-niruddha-tilitilika.
be
⚫ Samsakta, which I do not find mentioned elsewhere, is explained, 'a kind of beast of prey;' I think that samsakta may an adjective specifying the following word, and mean 'fighting' elephants.
