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himself to acknowledge his superior skill in shooting, and should 

 have no difficulty whatever in opposing Yama (the king of Hades). 

 The Brahmin on this returned home, and, when his wife was again 

 in labour, failed not to inform Arjoon, who, bathing himself, and 

 calling upon the name of Bhagavan, and taking up his bow Gan- 

 deeva, so completely nailed up the Brahmin's door with arrows, that, 

 on all the six sides, there remained not a single opening where even 

 the air could enter : and there he stood watching with his bow and 

 arrows ready in his hand, but could see nothing. On the former 

 occasions the child came out (of his mother's womb) when dead, 

 but now even the dead child was vanished through the air. The 

 father wept and mourned, and, going to Creeshna, abused Arjoon 

 in the most unqualified terms for his idle boasting ; and Arjoon was 

 so much ashamed, that he said he would go and fetch the Brah- 

 min's son away from Yama himself. But though he went thither, 

 and also to Eendre-Pooree, and other Poorees, he could get no 

 tidings whatsoever of the child ; so, coming back to the earth, af- 

 ter a fruitless search in extreme affliction, he collected a heap of 

 faggots, and, setting them on fire, was going to cast himself into 

 the flames. Creeshna seeing this, took him by the hand, and said 

 he had news of the Brahmin's son, and that they must go together 

 and fetch him from a place whither neither his own hand nor Ar- 

 joon's could reach. So they mounted a carriage together, and went 

 towards the west, and, passing all the seven climates and all the 

 stages of the universe, came to that profound and palpable darkness, 

 where there is no admission of the sun, or the moon, or fire. As 

 they had now no other means of proceeding, Soodharsan-Chakra* 



* " In the Persian translation of the Bhagavat," meaning 1 the present, says Sir William 

 Jones, " Creeshna is said to have descended with his favorite Arjoon to the seat of the Stygian 

 Jove of India, from whom he instantly obtained the favour which he requested, that the souls 

 of a Brahmin's six sons, who bad been slain in battle, might re-animate their respective bodies : 



K 2 



