42. At this moment there, I had come to know by my reminiscence, that <a> certain _muni_ will lecture to the public, the Vasishtha’s address of Ráma hereafter. 43. I remembered my former state of holy trance (_samádhi_) and exclaimed; O, had I been an ascetic in another world. 44. I have entered into the body of another person, in order to see the sights in his dreaming; and all that I am now seeing (of this flood and others), is no more than a dream, and mere error of the mind and falsehood. 45. It is from our habitual bias in the present scene, that I believed these falsehoods as true in me; and though I was troubled to see myself to be borne away by the flood in my dream; yet I feel myself happy at present to find, it was but the unreality of a dream. 46. What I saw as water, was the whirling eddy in the ocean of the universal deluge, and as false as the water of mirage; and the hills and woods, and the cities and towns, that were swept away by the flood, were as false as any visual deception. 47. There were the gods and aerials, men and women, and huge snakes also borne away by the flood; and the great cities and mansions of the rulers of men (_i.e._ royal edifices), all floating upon the waters. 48. I saw the mountain merged in and mixed up with the waters, and being battered and shattered by the waves; I saw the approaching dissolution of the world, and thus considered within myself. 49. There is even the god Siva with his three eyes, swimming upon and swept away as a straw by the waves: O fie for shame! that there is nothing impossible for the fates. 50. Fragments of houses floating upon the waters, looked like lotus flowers flaunting under the sun-beams. 51. It was astonishing to see the bodies of Gandharvas, Kinnaras, and of men and Nágas, floating on the waters, like swarms of bees fluttering over lotus-beds in the lake. 52. The fragments of the splendid edifices of the gods and demigods and others, decorated with the ornamental works of the vidyádharas, were floating like golden vessels on the wide expanse of the ocean. 53. The god Indra was floating on the glassy water, as if he were lying in his crystal palace; he mounted over the waves, as if he rode on his elephant; and was swinging on the surges as upon his cradle. 54. The waves rising to the sky, were washing the faces of the stars, and the winds were scattering them all about; as they drop down the flowers of the garden of Eden on the mansions of the gods, and as men strew the ground with fried rice. 55. Waves as high as mountains rose to the sky, and then their breakers flying aloft like stones flung by ballistas, fell upon the lotus seat of Brahmá, and turned it about with the god also, who was sitting upon it in his deep meditation.