Philosophy and Religion / Yoga Vāsistha / Yoga-Vāsistha (6.2): Nirvāna-Prakarana

    Válmiki

    Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 6: Nirvāna-Prakarana (On ultimate extinction) - part 2. Chapter 135 - Disappearance of the Carcass, and the Reappearance of the Earth

    Vasistha resumed and said: After the corpse had been partly devoured by the demons, the gods who had been sitting on the polar mount, with vāsava or Indra at their head spoke to one another in the following manner.

    Lo! the voractious goblins have not yet wholly devoured the corpse; but flung its fat and flesh into the air to prove the paths of vehicles of Vidyādharas; and these being wafted away and scattered about by the winds, appear as huge masses of clouds overspreading the skies.

    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, 1.

    Alas! that the once delight- some 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.

    The big bones of its bulky body, form the mountains of this earth; and what is this high Himālaya, but the huge back bone of gigantic skeleton.

    Vasistha said: As the gods were speaking in this manner, the demons were employed in the mean time to construct the earth a new with the materials of the carcass, after which they flew in the air, and kept on dancing and flouncing there.

    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.

    And as this ocean from the pleasure 2 of the gods, it is thence forth styled the ocean of wine 3.

    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 abyss to dance again.

    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. 4

    And because the earth was besmeared, with the fat and flesh (medhas) of the corpse, it is thence forward termed the medinī or corpus. 5

    At last disappearance of the dead body of the demon, there appeared again the succession of day and night; and the lord of creatures having formed all things a new, restored the earth to its former shape. 6

    Footnotes

    1. in the forms of its mud and waters

    2. gaudium

    3. or merriment of the deities; in distinctions from the oceans of milk and other beverages

    4. It refers to strong drink and drunken sots

    5. 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

    6. This is event of the war between the gods and titan of yore




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