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Arjuna gazed at the visions spread around him and came upon things yet more wondrous. Carried north in his pure heart he saw a snowcovered peak and he saw the Nalini flowing between banks of lotuses through Kubera’s pleasuregardens. He saw the broad channel of the Ganges, the greatest river of them all. On its shores lions and tigers prowled across crystalline rocks, and deer darted beneath fruittrees in eternal blossom clumped in inviting groves that rang with birdsong. The tones of the strange horsehead singers filled his ears as he crossed the gleaming carpets of wild growth broken with golden ridges and moved among the blossoming thornapples that covered the foothills of Mandara.

80.35

Arjuna passed Mount Kala that glinted like a rock of kohl and Brahma·tunga and its unnamed rivers and lands, and he passed the hundred peaks of Sutunga and the forest of Sharyati, the holy grounds of Ashva·shiras and the Atharvanas, and the great mountain Vrisha·dansha. At last he came to Maha·mandara where the apsarases dwell and which rang too with the songs of the horseheaded bards. They paused on its peak and Partha and Krishna looked down and by the light of the moon saw the whole of the wondrous earth lying before them spangled in gold and streaming with pale cascades, its cities like the flowers of garlands strung between the million lustrous faces of its lakes.

Arjuna was in awe. Like an arrow from a bow’s string he and Krishna flew further out across the earth and up through the air and higher and higher into the heavens. ________