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64
SETUBANDHA
even as it resorted to fear; and forsook the nether regions even as it abandoned its natural calm.
18. The mountains were thrown headlong into the waters as they slanted. The branch-roots of the trees issued through the moving branches.10 The clouds were thrust upward by the (overturned) base of the mountains; and the cascades rolled upside down.
19. As the mountains were hidden in the gloom caused by sea spray rising high into the air, as a result of more and more mountains incessantly falling, the roar of the raging sea alone proclaimed that they had dropped.
20. The apes moved about, with their hair wet with spray, and the face smeared with the minerals of the mountains melting from subterranean heat; while their shoulders were at ease, because the mountains were cast down.
21. Released by the apes with the peaks upward, the mountains leaned over at the top, with the trees tossed by the wind, and dropped into the sea with the peaks down, growing lighter as the cascades poured out,
22. Yellow with orpiment,11 the tracks of the sinking mountains were covered with the flowers12 piled up by the waters as they divided and returned, and with the broken fragments of the floating Sallakī trees, fragrant with the ichor of elephants.13
23. A herd of angry wild buffaloes, with rolling red eyes, that tumbled off the summit of a mountain, partly submerged in the waters, disappeared as they turned round in a whirlpool.
24. Carried away by the heaving billows as the mountains sank, and in terror of their life, a herd of deer, although they parted and met, parted once more, content to have seen one another again.
9. i.e., surged up from the bottom.
10. It is fancied that when the mountains were overturned, the branchroots of trees like the banyan instead of hanging down stood high among the branches. Cf. 2.19.
11. The yellow mineral embedded in the mountains. 12. Those of the mountain trees. 13. Elephants feed on the leaves of these trees.
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