PRAISE OF CONTINUED PRACTICE OR THE FORCE OF HABIT. Argument:—The sage’s visit to the stony-mansion and the nymph’s relations of the force of habit. The Nymph continued:—If you, O sage, have any doubt in any part of my narration; then please to walk with me and see that mansion, and you will observe there many more wonders than what I have related. 2. Vasishtha said:—Upon this I said “well” and went on travelling with her in our aerial journey; as the fragrance of flowers flies with the winds, to aerial nothing in which they are both lost for ever. 3. As I passed far and afar, in the regions of air; I met with multitudes of etherial beings, and came to the sight of their celestial abodes. 4. Passing over the regions traversed by the celestials, in the upper and higher sphere of heaven; I arrived at blank and blanched sky, beyond the height and above the summit of the polar mountain. 5. I then passed amidst this etiolated vault and came out at last of it, as the fair moon appears under the white canopy of heaven; and beheld above me the bright belt of zodiac, containing the seven-fold golden spheres of the seven planets. Note. The Hindu astronomy does not reckon the earth as one of the moving planets. 6. As I was looking at that belt of the zodiac, I found it as a crystaline marble, and burning with fire. I could not discern any of the worlds that it encompassed (they being all put to shade by the zodiacal light). 7. I then asked my lovely companion, to tell me where were the created worlds, together with the gods and planetary bodies and stars, and the seven spheres of heaven. 8. Where were the oceans and the sky, with all its different sides (of the compass); where were the high and heavy bodies of clouds, the starry heaven, and the ascension and descension of the rolling planets. 9. Where are now, said I, the rows of the lofty mountain peaks, and the marks of the seas upon the earth; where are the circles and clusters of the islands, and where are the sunny shores and dry and parched grounds of deserts. 10. There is no reckoning of time here, nor any account of actions of men; nor is there any delusive appearance of a created world or anything whatever, in this endless and empty vacuum. 11. There is no name of the different races of beings, as the Gods, demigods, Vidyádharas, Gandharvas and other races of mankind; there is no mention of a sage or prince, or of aught that is good or evil, or of a heaven or hell, or day and night and their divisions into watches, hours &c. 12. There is no calculation of the divisions of time (in this extramundane space), nor any knowing of merit or demerit (in this uninhabited place); it is free from the hostility of the gods and demigods and the feelings of love and enmity (between man and man).