33. The holy and God knowing man, is passionless under all persecution, as an idol which they make with ligatures of straw and string; he remains as calm as the sea, after its howling waves are hushed; and though he may be engaged in a great many affairs in the world, yet he remains as calm and quiet in his mind, as a stone is unperturbed in its heart. CHAPTER LXXV. DESCRIPTION OF THE FINAL CONFLAGRATION OF THE WORLD. Argument:—Destruction of the world by the great fire, produced by a dozen of suns at the behest of Brahmá. Vasishtha continued:—Then sitting in my meditation of Brahmá, I cast my eyes around, I came to the sight of the region before me. 2. It being then midday, I beheld a secondary sun behind me, appearing as a conflagration over a mountain (or a burning mountain), at the furthest border of that side. 3. I saw the sun in the sky as a ball of fire, and another in the water burning as the submarine fire; I beheld a burning sun in the south east corner, and another in the southern quarter. 4. Thus I saw four fiery suns on the four sides of heaven, and as many in the four corners of the sky also. 5. I was astonished to find so many suns all at once in all the sides of heaven; and their flame-fire which seemed to burn down their presiding divinities—the Agni, Váyu, Yama, Indra &c. (The twelve suns of Hindu Astronomy, are the so many solar mansions in the twelve signs of the zodiac, which encircle all the sides of the compass, together with the personified climates under the same). 6. As I was looking astonished at these unnatural appearances, in the heavens above; there appeared on a sudden a terrestrial sun before me, bursting out of the submarine regions below. 7. Eleven of these suns were as reflexions of the one sun, seen in a prismatic mirror; and they rose out of the three suns of Brahmá, Vishnu and Siva, in the vacuity of the different sides of heaven. (The gloss explains the eleven suns, as the eleven Rudra forms of Siva—the god of destruction amidst the Hindu Trinity). 8. The same form of Rudra with its three eyes, shone forth in the forms of the twelve burning suns of heaven. (As Siva with the eleven Rudras, makes the number twelve, so doth the sun with the other eleven signs of the zodiac, make the same number). 9. In this manner the sun burnt down the world, as the flame of fire burns away dry wood of the forest; and the world was dried up of its moisture, as in the parching days of summer season. 10. The solar fire burnt away the woods, without any literal fire or flame; and the whole earth was as dry as dust by this fireless incendiarism. 11. My body became heated and my blood boiled as by the heat of a wild fire; and I left that place of torrid heat, and ascended to the remoter and higher regions of air.