53. And I remember also to have lived long as a tortoise on the borders of a river, and to have been carried away by the waves, sometimes under an arbour of creepers, over-hung with clusters of beautiful flowers; and at others to some wild cave washed by the waves. 54. I see how I acted the part of a goose with my covering of feathers, swimming on the high heaving waves on the surface of a lake. 55. Then seeing a poor gnat hanging on the moving leaf of a Sálmali branch, I became its associate and as contemptible a thing like itself. 56. I became an aquatic crane also, skimming playfully over the waters gushing from the hills, and slightly kissing the crests of the waves rising over the rapid torrent. 57. I remember also how I slighted the loves of amorous youths, and spurned off from me the Vidyádhara boys on the Gandha Mádana and Mandara hills. 58. I remember likewise the pangs of a lovelorn lass, when I lay pining in my bed, strewn over with the fragrance of camphor, and how I was decaying like the disk of the waning moon. 59. Thus I passed through many births, in the wombs of higher and lower animals, and found them all to be full of pain. And my soul has run over the billows of the irresistible current of life, like the fleet antelope, pacing its speed with the swiftness of the wind (_Vátapramí_). CHAPTER XXVIII. SECTION I. EXPOSITION OF LÍLÁ’S VISION. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, in what manner the goddesses broke out of the strongholds of their bodies, and the prison-house of this world (where their souls were pent up), and passed through infinite space, to survey the scenes beyond its confines. (_i.e._ How does the mind and the flight of imagination, reach to regions unknown and unseen before). 2. Vasishtha replied:—Where is the world and where is its support or solidity? They were all situated in the region within the minds of the goddesses. 3. They saw in it the hilly tract, where the Bráhmana Vasishtha had his abode and his desire of royalty (pictured it in their minds). 4. They saw in a corner of it the deserted mansion of the Bráhman, and they saw in it the surface of the earth stretching to the seas (_i.e._ in their mental view). 5. They beheld in that imaginary spot of earth the city of the prince, and the royal palace which he had enjoyed with Arundhati his consort (in his imagination). 6. How she was born under the name of Lílá, and worshipped the goddess of wisdom—Sarasvatí; by whom she was miraculously conveyed to the delightful region of the sky. 7. It was in the mansion situated in that hilly village, that she beheld the world placed within the space of a span of her mind. 8. Having come out of her vision of the world, she found herself seated in her house, as one finds himself lying in his own bed, after his rambling from one dream to another.