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46
SETUBANDHA
the sea, the sound echoed like the rumble of the clouds at the epoch of universal ruin.
72. The rivers, flung up (by the fiery arrows) into the sky, dropped like meteors at the epoch of destruction, with the flames massed in their mouths, and the waters long drawn out like streaks of smoke.
73. Having by degrees left the expanse of the beach, the sea, with the waters subsiding, appeared to recede step by step.
74. The waters disappeared in the flames, and the sky in the surging waters enveloped in flames, and the ten directions in the sky overrun by the waters.
75. As the waters spread out, heated and swirled by the flames, the whirlpools of the ocean lessened in speed, like the wheel of the sun's chariot slowed down by the summer.45
76. Emitting a dense volume of smoke, the fire rolled over the vast ocean, and seemed to be enveloped in moss as the flames blended with the emerging lustre of the emeralds.
77. Smitten by Rāma's arrows, the raging sea blazed like the submarine fire, and clove like a mountain; rumbled like the clouds, and assailed the sky like a gale.
78. The fire stood still when the waters became calm; rolled when they rolled; broke up when they parted asunder; swelled when they swelled; and subsided only when they subsided.
79. The groups of islands, with their coast-line distinct on account of the sea subsiding, heated by the fire of Rāma's arrows, looked higher while remaining the same in extent.
80-87. Thus did Rāma overthrow the ocean, with its waters swirled by the flames, the mountains shattered, the serpents destroyed, and the bottom exposed.
The conches piteously wailed, rolling and straying amidst the billows; and the half-burnt serpents wriggled, scorched by the blazing submarine fire. (81)
45. The one-wheeled chariot of the sun is fancied as going slower on the long summer days.
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