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colour of his skin being black and yellow, his head close shorn, 

 and all his limbs distorted. He placed himself at men's doors ; so 

 that all those who saw him shuddered with apprehension, and be- 

 came even as dead men from mere affright. Every person, to 

 whose door he came, shot an arrow at him ; and the moment the 

 arrow quitted the bow-string, they saw the spectre no more, nor 

 knew which way he was gone. At the same time adverse winds 

 blew so violently, that all the trees were thrown down ; and the 

 tempest was so fierce, that men and brutes were carried away by 

 it. Besides this, innumerable quantities of mice swarmed in 

 every house, so that the moment any thing was set down, if it 

 were not closely watched, the mice carried it away. Swarms upon 

 swarms of these vermin ran about the market-places ; and men's 

 doors being entirely torn away by the dreadful winds, the mice 

 came and gnawed off all their hair and beards while they slept. 

 Nightingales and shareks lost their own notes, and squeaked like 

 mice or hooted like owls, and never left off moaning day or night. 

 Multitudes of owls, also, entered all the houses by night; or, sit- 

 ting on the roofs, continued hooting and screeching till the morn- 

 ing. In that dreadful period, cows brought forth ass-colts ; mares, 

 the foals of camels ; bitches, kittens ; and weasels, mice. The 

 Yadavas, too, became addicted to all sorts of wickedness and 

 depravity, and were perpetually abusing and reviling the poor and 

 the good ; and left off paying all kind of respect to their spiritual 

 guides and men of science, while the order of nature was reversed, 

 and women got the better of men. Fire gave no light ; the flames 

 burnt dusky and livid ; and, at the time of sun-rise and sun-set, 

 there appeared near the sun thousands of human figures in the air, 

 with weapons in their hands, skirmishing together, and these ap- 

 pearances were visible to every body. The Yogees and the Rey- 

 shees, and the devotees, and all the religious, whatever skin they 

 Vol. in. L 



