Vasishtha continued:—Saying so, the god Brahmá vanished from the sight of the gods, as the wave of the sea retires and mixes with its waters, after having dashed and crashed against the shore. 2. The gods, having heard the words of Brahmá, returned to their respective abodes; as the breeze bearing the fragrance of the lotus, wafts it to the forests on all sides. 3. They halted in their delightsome houses for some days, as the bees rest themselves in the cells of flowers after their wanderings. 4. Having refreshed and invigorated themselves in the course of time, they gave the alarm of their rising, with the beating of their drums, sounding as the peal of the last day. 5. Immediately the demons rose from the infernal regions, and met the gods in the midway air, and commenced their dreadful onset upon them. 6. Then there was a clashing of the armours, and clattering of swords and arrows, the flashing of lances and spears, and the crackling of mallets and various other weapons, as battle axes and discuses, thunderbolts, and hurling of rockstones and huge trees and the like. 7. There was also many magical instruments, which ran on all sides like the torrents of rivers; while rocks and hills, high mountains and huge trees, were flung and hurled from both sides, filling the earth with confused noise and rumbling. 8. The encampment of the gods, was beset by a magical flood of the demons, resembling the stream of the Ganges; while showers of firearms and missiles of all sorts, were hurled upon their heads from above. 9. Many big bodies of the gods and demons, rose and fought and fell by turns, as the elemental bodies of earth and the other elements, rise to and disappear from view by the act of Máyá or illusion. (The enormous bodies of the warriors, fought with one another in the same manner, as the jarring elements clash against each other). 10. Big bombs broke the heads of mountains, and the earth became a vast sheet of blood like a sanguine sea. The heaps of dead bodies on both sides, rose as forests to the face of heaven. 11. Living lions with iron bodies, and rows of saw-like teeth and nails white as Kása flowers, were let loose by the magic art to roam rampant in the airy field; devouring the stones, flung by the gods and demons, and bursting out into shells and shots and many other weapons. 12. The serpentine weapons flew with their mountainous shapes in the ocean of the sky; having their eyes flashing with their venomous heat, and burning with the fire of the twelve suns on the last day of desolation. 13. The hydraulic engine sent forth floods of weapons, whirling as whirlpools, and sounding loud as the rattling thunder; and sweeping the hills and rocks in their current. 14. The stone missiles which were thrown by the Garuda engine, to the aerial battle-field of the gods, emitted at intervals water and fire, and sometimes shone as the sun, and at others became altogether dark.