Verse 15

⁷How the earth is set and how it stands has been described. Below the earth too are seven hollows, laid out one under another at ten thousand yojanas, each of that length and breadth: Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Talatala, Mahatala, Rasatala and Patala. ⁸In these heavens of the hollows live Daityas, Danavas and the sons of Kadru, householders whose wives, children, kinsmen, friends and followers are always glad and fond of them, in houses, gardens, playing-grounds and pleasure-places richly made, with more of desire, enjoyment, mastery, delight, well-being and power than heaven itself holds. Their wanting meets no check even from the Lord, and they take their pleasure in maya.

⁹In them, great king, shine cities built by Maya, master of maya, made bright with the best of the houses of the lords of the hollows: strange buildings, walls, gate-towers, halls, meeting-places, squares and shrines wrought of the choicest of many kinds of gem, and laid floors thronged with pairs of snakes and demons, with pigeons, parrots and mynahs. ¹⁰And their gardens go far past the beauty of the world of the gods, gardens that gladden mind and senses: trees bowed under bunches of flower and fruit, lovely with new leaves and fine branches and held in the arms of creepers; pools full of clean water where pairs of many kinds of water-bird have made their homes among lotus and white lily and blue lily and kahlara and dark lotus and the red hundred-petalled flower, the water stirred by shoals of fish leaping; and the many sweet sounds of creatures crowded in one play, a festival for the senses.

¹¹There no fear at all is felt from the divisions of time, from day and night and the rest. ¹²There the crest-jewels of the great snakes drive off all the darkness. ¹³Nor, for those who live there, are there troubles of mind or sicknesses of body, since they have the juices of the herbs of heaven, the life-giving drinks, food, drink and bathing; nor wrinkles, grey hair or age, nor the body losing its colour, nor bad smell, sweat, weariness or failing, none of the marks the years leave. ¹⁴For those fortunate ones death does not come from anywhere at all, except from the light of the Bhagavan under the name of his disc. ¹⁵When it comes in among them, the demons' wives mostly lose what they carry, from fear alone; it flows away and falls.