Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/93

Rh each other, and in the following order, the stars. Mercury, (beyond the stars,) Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ursa Major, and the Pole Star. The four remaining worlds (beyond the Pole Star) continue to rise, one above the other, at immense and increasing intervals. The entire circumference of the celestial space is then given with the utmost exactitude of numbers.

“In all of these superior worlds are framed heavenly mansions, differing in glory, destined to form the habitation of various orders of celestial spirits. In the seventh, or highest, is the chief residence of Brahma, said by one of the “divine sages” to be so glorious that he could not describe it in two hundred years, as it contains, in a superior degree, every thing which is precious, or beautiful, or magnificent in all the other heavens. What then must it be, when we consider the surpassing grandeur of some of these? Glance, for example, at the heaven which is prepared in the third world, and intended for Indra—head and king of the different ranks and degrees of subordinate deities. Its palaces are ‘all of purest gold, so replenished with vessels of diamonds, and columns and ornaments of jasper, and sapphire, and emerald, and all manner of precious stones, that it shines with a splendor exceeding the brightness of twelve thousand suns. Its streets are of the clearest crystal, fringed with fine gold. It is surrounded with forests abounding with all kinds of trees and flowering shrubs, whose sweet odors are diffused all around for hundreds of miles. It is bestudded with gardens and pools of water; warm in winter and cool in summer, richly stored with fish, water-fowl, and lilies, blue, red, and white, spreading out a hundred or a thousand petals. Winds there are, but they are ever refreshing, storms and sultry heats being unknown. Clouds there are, but they are light and fleecy, and fantastic canopies of glory. Thrones there are, which blaze like the coruscations of lightning, enough to dazzle any mortal vision. And warblings there are, of sweetest melody, with all the inspiring harmonies of music and of song, among bowers that are ever fragrant and ever green.’ ”—P. 118.

The reader will remember that these descriptions are not to be