7. Some of them are of earthy substance, but shining and moving onward like mountains in motion. 8. Some were of woody appearance, and others of stony substance; but they are all lightsome bodies, and all moving onward in their uninterrupted course. 9. I beheld also some figures like carved statues of stone, standing in the open space of my mind, and talking together all their live-long days. 10. In this manner I beheld for a long while, many such figures like images in my dream, and was quite bewildered in my utter ignorance of them. 11. I then intended to perform my austere devotion, in order to obtain my liberation; when the god Indra appeared unto me and said: “no Vipaschit, you are doomed to become a stag again, and not entitled to your liberation now.” 12. You are propelled by your previous predilection to prefer the pleasures of heaven; therefore I must direct you to dwell in my paradise, and wander there amidst my gardens of _mandara_ trees. 13. Being thus bid by him, I rejoined and said to him: I am weary, O lord, with the troubles of the world, and want to get my release from them; ordain therefore my immediate emancipation from them. 14. The god listened to my prayer and said: emancipation attends on the pure soul, which is purged from all its desires; and this had been already expounded to you by the god of fire (in his narrative of the sage and hunter); ask therefore some other boon, said he, and I begged him to tell me of my next and future state. 15. Indra replied and said:--I find you to be fated to be changed to the state of a deer hereafter, from the fond desire of your heart, to wander about and feed freely in the fields. 16. By becoming a deer, you will have to enter the holy assembly (of Dasaratha); where another deer like you, has obtained his liberation before, by listening to the spiritual instructions formerly delivered there by me. 17. Therefore be born as a deer in some forest on earth with your pensive soul; and you will then come to recollect your past life from its relation by Vasishtha (in the court of king Dasaratha). 18. You will learn there, that all this existence is but the delusion of a dream, and the creation of imagination; and the account of your future life depicted in its true colour. 19. After being released from the body of the deer, you shall regain your human form, and perceive the rays of holy light shining in your inward spirit. 20. This light will then dispel the long prevailing gloom of ignorance from your mind, and then you shall attain your _nirvána_ supineness, as the calm and breathless wind. 21. After the god had said so, I had the presentiment of being a deer in this forest, and entirely forgot my human nature, under my firm conviction of having become a beast. 22. I have been ever since residing in the recess of these woods, under the impression of my being changed to a stag; and feeding ever since upon the grass and herbs growing on the mountain top.