CHAPTER CXXXV.Disappearance of the Carcass, and the Reappearance of the Earth.
Argument:—The corpse was eaten up by the ghosts, and its blood sucked up by the goddess.
Argument:—The corpse was eaten up by the ghosts, and its blood sucked up by the goddess.
Vasishtharesumed and said:—After the corpse had been partly devoured by the demons, the gods who had been sitting on the polar mount, with Vásava or Indra at their head spoke to one another in the following manner.
2. Lo! the voracious goblins have not yet wholly devoured the corpse; but flung its fat and flesh into the air to prove the paths of vehicles of Vidyádharas; and these being wafted away and scattered about by the winds, appear as huge masses of clouds overspreading the skies.
3. See them also throwing away the relics of their food and drink, over the seven continents and oceans of the earth, and making it again to reappear to view (in the forms of its mud and waters).
4. Alas! that the once delightsome earth, is now polluted by the impure carrion and blood; and covered under the garniture of its forests, as the sky is over shadowed by clouds.
5. The big bones of its bulky body, form the mountains of this earth;
and what is this high Himálaya, but the huge back bone of
6. Vasishtha said:—As the gods were speaking in this manner, the demons were employed in the meantime to construct the earth anew with the materials of the carcass, after which they flew in the air, and kept on dancing and flouncing there.
7. As the ghosts were disporting in their giddy dance in the air, the god commanded the liquid portion of the dead body, to be collected together in one great basin of the ocean the abodes of whales and sharks.
8. And as this ocean was from the pleasure (gaudium) of the gods, it is thenceforth styled the ocean of wine (or merriment of the deities; in distinctions from the oceans of milk and other beverages).
9. The demons having done their dancing in the pandemonium in air, come down to drink their full draughts of that Stygian pool; after which they repair to their aerial abysm to dance again.
10. The demoniac orgies are still wont, to indulge themselves in drinking of that bloody pool; and to dance in their airy circles, in company with their co-partners. (It refers to strong drink and drunken sots).
11. And because the earth was besmeared, with the fat and flesh (medhas) of the corpse, it is thenceforward termed themediníor corpus. (The earth is said to have been formed of the flesh of the dead body of the demon Madhu, killed by Hari in the beginning of creation).
12. At