DESCRIPTION OF THE INSIDE OF THE STONY MANSION
OF THE WORLD.
Argument:—The nymph’s Relation of the manner of her habitation in
the womb of the solid stone.
Vasishtha said:—I then seated as I was, in my imaginary seat in the sky,
asked the lady who was also sitting like myself in the visionary air:
saying:—
2. Tell me, O gentle lady, how could an embodied being as yourself,
abide in the inside of a block of stone; how could you move about within
that imporous substance, and what was the cause of your abode therein.
3. The Nymph replied:—Wonder not, O sage, at this kind of our
habitation, which is as habitable to us, and inhabited by other
creatures, as the open and spacious world which you inhabit.
4. There are the snakes and reptiles, living in and moving about the
bowels of the earth; and there are huge rocks deeply rooted in the
subterranean cell; the waters are running within the bosom of the
ground, with as much freedom as the winds are flying all about the open
air.
5. The oceans are flowing with the fulness of their waters, and the
finny tribe moving slowly beneath and above their surface; and there are
infinite numbers of living creatures, that are incessantly born and
dying away in them.
6. It is in the cavity of the mundane stone, that the waters are gliding
below, as the winds are flying above; here the celestials are moving and
roving in the air, and the earth and the planetary bodies, revolving
with their unmoving mountains and other immovables.
7. There are also the gods, demigods and human beings, moving in their
respective circles, within the womb of this stone; and it is from the
beginning of creation, that the waters of rivers are running as those of
the oceans.
8. Again it is from the beginning of creation, that the sun has been
darting his beams from above; and strewing them like lotuses on the lake
like land, while the dark clouds of heaven are hovering over them like a
swarm of black bees, fluttering upon those blooming blossoms.
9. The moon spreads her light like sandal paste on all sides, and
effaces thereby the darkness, which overspreads the bosom of night, and
covers the face of the evening star.
10. The sun light is the lamp of his light in heavenly mansion, and
scatters its rays on all the ten sides of the skies, by means of their
conductor of air. (It is believed that the circumambient air is the
medium, through which the pencils of solar light pass in all
directions).
11. The wheel of the starry frame, is continually revolving in the air
by the will of God, like a threshing mill turning about its central axle
by means of a string.
12. This rotatory circle of celestial bodies, about its axis of the
pole, kills all things under its two valves of heaven and earth, as the
wheel of fate grinds them to dust. (So says Kabir the saint of Julpa
caste: “Every one is ground to dust, under the two disks of earth and
sky, as under the jaws of death”).
13. The surface of the earth is full of hills and mountains, and the
bosom of the sea is filled by rocks and islands; the upper sky contains
the celestial abodes, and the demons occupy the lower regions below the
ground.
14. The orbit of this earth, resembles the ear-ring of the goddess of
the three worlds; and the verdant orb of this planet, is as the pendant
gem of the ringlet, continually with the fluctuations of its
people.
15. Here all creatures are impelled by their desires to their mental and
bodily activities, as if moved to and fro by the flying winds, and are
thus led to repeated births and deaths (from which they have no
respite).
16. The silent sage sits in his sedate meditation, as the sky is unmoved
with its capacity of containing all things within itself; but the earth
is shaken and wasted by the dashing waves, and the fire is put down by
its blazing flame, and every thing is moved about as monkey by the wind
of its desires.
17. All the living beings abounding in the earth and water, and those
flying in the air, as well as such as live in the hills and on trees;
together with the gods and giants, are alike doomed to death and
regeneration, as the ephemeral insects, worms and flies.
18. Time—the greatest slaughterer, destroys the gods, giants, gandharvas
and all, with its many arms of ages and yugas, and of years, months,
days and nights, as a herdsman kills his cattle, which he has reared up
himself. (Time feeds upon what it has fed himself).
19. All these rise and fall in the eventful ocean of time, and having
leapt and jumped and danced awhile, sink in the abyss of the fathomless
whirl of death, from which none can rise again.
20. All sorts of beings living in the fourteen spheres of the world, are
carried away as dust and ashes by the gust of death, to the hollow womb
of air, where they disappear as empty clouds in the autumnal sky.
21. The high heaven which is ever clad in the clean and clear attire of
the atmosphere, and wears the frame work of the stars as a cap or crown
on its head, holds the two lights of the sun and moon in its either
hand, and shows us the works of gods in the skies. (Heaven is the book
of God, before thee set &c. Milton).
22. It remains unmoved for ever, and never changes its sides composed of
the four quarters of heaven, notwithstanding vicissitudes of the sky,
the rushing of the winds, the tremor of the earth, the roaring of the
clouds and the intense heat of the sun (All which it bears as patiently
as the fixed trees and stones on earth).
23. And all things continue in their destined course, whether they that
are conscious or those which are unconscious of these changes in nature;
such are the appearance of meteors and portents in the sky, the roaring
of clouds, the eclipses of the planets, and the trembling of the earth
below.
24. The submarine fire sucks up the over flowing waters, of the seven
great basins or oceans on earth; in the same manner as the
all-destroying time, devours the creatures in all the different worlds.
25. All things are continually going on in their course, in the manner
of the continued motion of the (sadágati) of the current air: Namely;
all earth born worms moving on and returning into the bowels of the
earth; the birds of the air are moving in and flying on all sides of the
sky; the fishes are swimming and skimming all about the waters, the
beasts returning to their caverns in earth and the hills, and such is
the case with the inhabitants of all the continents and islands lying in
the womb of this world.