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SETUBANDHA
the ocean;41 while the conch shells split by the arrows seemed to be the bangles slipping off their hands.42
64. The (submarine) mountains, with their slopes enveloped in flames, and their broad wings soaked in water, laboured skywards, being sluggish from long confinement in the sea.43
65. The waters of the ocean blazed with the animals aflame; whirled with the gems and coral reefs whirling with thein; roared with the whirlpools booming; and clove as the mountains clove asunder.
66. The flames looked just like the ocean, now whirling in the abyss of the whirlpools, now impeded by the gem rocks of the Malaya mountain, now tossing on the rolling waves.
67. Violently blazing and overflowing, the ocean set the broad woods of the Malaya mountain on fire, and quenched them again as it flowed back with the flames quenched.
68. Massive like mountain peaks, the fire raged, raising the sea, and burning the (submerged) mountains down in masses; the flesh and fat of the sea monsters adding to the fury of the flames.
69. The masses of water, raised from the bottom by the flames, and flung up by the arrows, and forced down as they turned over, dropped, with the vast whirlpools rolling upside down.
70. The sea smoked and burst into flames, parted asunder and loosened its grip on the bottom, and dashed over the slopes of the Malaya. Still it abated not its onward movement, 44 the first sign of fortitude.
71. As the whales and the eyes of the mighty serpents, struck by the fire of Rāma's arrows, burst in twain in the bosom of
41. Lit. placed on the ocean.
42. The rivers are figured as the wailing wives of the ocean, oppressed by Rāma's arrows; and the conch shells are fancied as the bangles slipping off their hands in the struggle to help their consort.
43. The winged mountains find it difficult to fly out of the blazing sea for lack of practice. See verses 37 and 51.
44. i.e., its energy or spirit of resistance as seen in its refusal to yield to force and open a way for Rāma through its waters.
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