8. They remained in their austere devotion, subsisting upon liquid food which supported the trees also. They drank but a draught of water, which they held in the hollow of their palms, from a neighbouring cascade at the close of the day. (There is no single word for a _gandusha_ or _chuluka_ of water in English; the word handful being equivalent to _mushthi_ and _prastha_). 9. They remained standing and unmoved as immovable trees, and continued long in that posture, in the manner of an erect wood in heat and cold. (_Várkshivritti_ means intense meditation conducted by forgetting one’s self to wood or stone). 10. They passed in this manner the period of two ages, before their devotion met with the approbation of the god, who bears the crescent of the moon on his forehead. (This crescent was no doubt the missile disk, which the war-like god Siva held on his head in the manner of the Seiks). 11. The god advanced towards the parching pair, with the cooling moon-beams on his forehead; as when that luminary casts her dewy light on the dried trees and scorched lotuses, under the burning sun beams of a summer day. 12. The god, mounted on his milk-white bull, and clasping the fair Umá on his left, and holding the beaming moon on his head, appeared to them, as the vernal season was approaching to a green wood (or furze), with strewing flowers upon them. (There is an alliteration of _soma_ and _soma_ in the double sense of Uma and the moon. This kind of play upon words is very characteristic of metaphysical writers in all ages, as _Alethes melethon_. Lewis Hist. Phil. I. 69). 13. They with brightening eyes and faces beheld the god, as the lotuses hail the appearance of the comely moon; and then bowed down to the god of the silvery bow and snow white countenance. (Kálidása in his Mahápadya, has heaped all these and many more ensigns of whiteness on the hoary Hara of Himálaya). 14. Then the god rising to their view like the full moon, and appearing in the midst of the heaven and earth, spoke smilingly unto them in a gentle and audible voice; the breath of which refreshed them, like the breath of spring reviving the faded plants of the forest. 15. The god said:—I am pleased with thy devotion, O Bráhman! prefer thy prayer to me, and have thy desired boon granted to thee immediately. 16. The Bráhman replied:—O Lord of gods, deign to favour me with ten intelligent male children. Let these be born of me to dispel all my sorrows (for want of a male issue). 17. The sun rejoined:—The god said, be it so, and then disappeared in the air; and his great body passed through the etherial path, like the surge of the sea with the tremendous roar of thunders.