6. The earth with her waters is like a bowl of wine in the hand of time, dressed and flavoured with all sorts of lilies and lotuses. 7. The lion with his huge body and startling mane, his loud roaring and tremendous groans, seems as a caged bird of sport in the hand of time. 8. The Mahákála like a playful young _Kokila_ (cuckoo), appears in the figure of the blue autumnal sky, and warbling as sweet as the notes of a lute of gourd (in the music of the spheres). 9. The restless bow of death is found flinging its woeful arrows (darts of death) with ceaseless thunder claps on all sides. 10. This world is like a forest, wherein sorrows are ranging about as playful apes, and time like a sportive prince in this forest, is now roving, now walking, now playing and now killing his games. CHAPTER XXV. SPORTS OF DEATH. Time stands the foremost of all deceitful players in this world. He acts the double parts of creation and destruction, and of action and fate (utility and fatality). 2. Time has no other character but those of action and motion by which his existence is known to us, and which bind all beings (in the succession of thoughts and acts). 3. Fate is that which frustrates (the necessary consequences of) the acts of all created beings, as the solar heat serves to dissolve the conglomeration of snows. 4. This wide world is the stage wherein the giddy mob dance about (in their appointed times). 5. Time has a third name of a terrifying nature known as _Kritántah_ (Fate), who in the form of a Kápálika (one holding human skulls in his hand), dances about in the world. 6. This dancing and loving Kritántah (Fate), is accompanied by his consort called Destiny to whom he is greatly attached (as his colleague). 7. Time (as Siva), wears on his bosom of the world, the triplicate white and holy thread composed of the serpent named Ananta and the stream of Ganges, and the digit of the moon on his forehead (to measure his course). (_Viz_:—the Zodiacal belt; the milky way, and the lunar mansions). 8. The sun and the moon are the golden armlets of time, who holds in his palm the mundane world as the paltry plaything of a nosegay. 9. The firmament with its stars appears like a garment with coloured spots in it; the clouds called _Pushkara_ and _Avarta_ are as the skirts of that garment, which are washed by Time in the waters of the universal deluge. 10. Before him, dances his beloved Destiny with all her arts for ever, to beguile the living that are fond of worldly enjoyments. 11. People hurry up and down to witness the dance of Destiny, whose unrestrained motion keeps them at work, and causes their repeated births and deaths. 12. The people of all the worlds are studded about her person as her ornaments, and the sky stretching from the heaven of gods to the infernal regions, serves for the veil on her head.