9. He thus passed full eight months, continuing with his body immerged in the water of the lake; and his face was shrivelled and wan, like the lotuses of his lake for want of sun shine. 10. When he was emaciated by his austerities, his god Hari appeared before him, in the manner of a dark cloud of the rainy weather, appearing over the parched earth of the hot season. 11. The Lord said:—Rise O Bráhman! from amidst the water, and receive thy desired blessing of me; because the tree of thy vow, is now pregnant with its expected fruit. 12. The Bráhman replied:—I bow to thee, O my lord Vishnu! thou art the receptacle of the three worlds, and the reservoir of innumerable starry worlds, which rise as lotuses in the lake of thy heart, and whereon thou sittest like the black bee (to behold their beauty). 13. I want to behold my lord, the spiritual delusion which thou hast ordained to blind fold this world, and known as Vishnu Máyá. 14. Vasishtha said:—To this the god replied:—you shall verily behold this delusion, and get rid of it afterwards, by virtue of thy devotion. Saying so, the god disappeared from his sight as an aerial castle. 15. Vishnu being gone, the good Bráhman got up from his watery bed, in the manner of the fair and humid moon, rising from amidst the cool and white milky ocean. 16. He was glad in his soul at the sight of the lord of world, and his heart was as full blown with joy; as the Kumuda (selenian) lotuses unfold at the sight of the moon. 17. He then passed some days in that forest, overjoyed in his mind by the sight of Hari, and employed himself in discharge of his Bráhmanical duties. 18. Once on a time as he had been bathing in the lake, overspread with full-blown lotuses, he thought upon the words of Vishnu, as the great sages reflect in their minds the sense of texts of Vedas. 19. Then in the act of his discharging his sacerdotal functions in the midst of sacred water, he made his mental prayer for the expurgation of his sins. (This is the ceremony agha-marshna). 20. As he was performing this act in the midst of the water, he chanced to forget his sacred mantras (texts), and was drowned in deep water in the confusion of his mind. 21. He thought that his body had fallen down like a mountain tree, in the dale below by a blast of wind; and that his dead corpse was taken up and mourned over by his friends. 22. He thought that his vital breath had fled away from his being, and the members of his body were as motionless as the shrubs of sugar cane; laid down on the ground by a hurricane. 23. He thought his countenance to have faded away, and grown as pale as the withered leaf of a tree; and that his body now turned to a carcass, was lying on the ground like a lotus-bud torn from its stalk. 24. His eye balls were as dull and dim, as the stars of the morning are shorn of their beams; and the ground seemed to be as dry to him as in a drought of rain water, and filled with flying dust on all sides.