The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)Valmiki
Religion
The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)
Valmiki
Hinduism -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Religious life -- Hinduism -- Early works to 1800
89. Know Ráma, that an unknown and absent cause is as evident as any
present and palpable cause, which is perceptible to the senses; for who
can deny the fact, that it is the absence of fire that produces the
cold, and which is quite evident to every living body.
90. See Ráma, how the fire ascends upward in the air in form of
fumes, which take the shape of clouds in the azure sky, which being
transformed afterwards into fire (electricity); becomes the immediate
cause of the moon (by its presence [Sanskrit: ájnát kárana]).
91. Again the fire being extinguished by cold, sends its watery
particles upwards, and this moisture produces the moon, as the absent
or remote cause of the same. ([Sanskrit: mauna kárana]).
92. The submarine fire likewise that falls into the feeding on the
foulness of the seven oceans, and swallows their briny waters,
disgorges their gases and fumes in the open air, and these flying to
the upper sky in the form of clouds, drop down their purified waters in
the form of sweet milky fluids in the milky ocean (which gives birth
to the milk white moon). (It is said that there is an apparatus in the
bosom of the clouds, for purifying the impure waters rising in vapours
in the atmosphere from the earth and seas below).
93. The hot sun also devours the frigid ball of the moon or (the moon
beams), in the conjunction at the dark fortnight (amávasya), and then
ejects her out in their opposition in the bright half of every month,
as the stork throws off the tender stalk of the lotus which it has
taken. (The sun is represented to feed on, and let out the moon beams
by turns in every month).
94. Again the winds that suck up the heat and moisture of the earth in
the vernal and hot weather, drop them down as rain water in the rainy
season, which serves to renovate the body of exhausted nature. (This
passage is explained in many ways from the homonymous word some of
which it is composed; and which severally means the moon, the handsome,
the _soma_ plant and its juice).
95. The earthly water being carried up by the sun beams, which are
called his _karas_ or hands, are converted into the solar rays, which
are the immediate cause of fire. (Here the water which is by its nature
opposed to fire, becomes the cause of that element also).
96. Here the water becomes fire both by privation of its fluidity and
frigidity, which is the remote cause of its formation as also by its
acquirement of aridity or dryness and calidity or warmth; which is the
immediate of its transformation to the igneous element. (This is an
instance of the double or mixed causality of water in the production of
fire. Gloss).
97. The fire being absent, there remains the presence of the moon; and
the absence of the moon, presents the presence of fire.
98. Again the fire being destroyed, the moon takes its place; in the
same manner, as the departure of the day introduces the night in lieu
of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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