12. Being possest of their consciousness in their spiritual forms, they descended to observe the manners of elemental bodies that were exposed before them. 13. All the four Vipaschitas were actuated by their previous impressions, to the inquiry into the measure and extent of the ignorance, which led people to the belief of the body as soul itself, in want of their knowledge of the spiritual soul (as it is the case with gross materialists). 14. They roved from one continent to another, to witness in what part of this ideal globe of the earth was this ignorance (avidyá) most firmly seated, so as to give it the appearance of a visible substance. 15. Then passing over the seven continents and oceans, the western Vipaschit, happened to meet with the God Hari standing on a parcel of firm land. 16. Receiving then the incomparable knowledge of divine truth from him, he remained in his _samádhi_ meditation at that spot for full five years. 17. Finding afterwards his soul to be full with divine presence, he relinquished even his spiritual body, he fled like his vital breath, to the transcendent vacuum of final extinction _nirvána_. 18. The eastern Vipaschit was translated to the region of moon (by his adoration of that luminary), and was seated beside that full bright orb (for his great purity and piety). But the prince, though placed in the exalted sphere of the moon, continued ever afterwards to lament for the loss of his former body. (So heavenly souls are said to long for their bodies). 19. The southern prince being forgetful of his spiritual nature, thinks himself to be reigning in the Salmalidwípa, and employed in the investigation of external and sensible objects. 20. The northern one dwelling amidst the limpid waters of the seventh ocean, thought himself to be devoured by a shark, which retained him in his belly for the space of a thousand and one years. 21. There he fed upon the bowels of the shark, which killed the animal in a short time; and then he came out of its belly, as if it gave birth to a young shark. 22. Then he passed the frigid ocean of snows and over its icy tracts, stretching to eighty thousand yojanas (or leagues) in dimension. 23. He next arrived <at> a spot of solid gold, which was the haunt of gods, and stretched to ten thousand yojanas, and here he met with his end. 24. In this land the prince Vipaschit attained the state of a Godhead, in the same manner as a piece of wood is turned to fire in a burning furnace. 25. Being one of the principal gods, he went to the Lokáloka or polar mountain, which surrounded the globe of the earth, as an aqueduct begirds the base of a tree. 26. It rises to the height of fifty thousand yojanas, and has the inhabited earth on one side of it which faces the sunlight, and eternal darkness reigning on the other. 27. He ascended to the top of the polar mount, which pierced the starry sphere; and as he was seated upon it, he was beheld in the light of a star by the beholders below.