Verse 24

²⁴As his body spread, the serpent's own coils were hurt, and it let go and reared up in anger with its hoods lifted, and stood there breathing, its nostrils vessels boiling poison, its eyes fixed, its mouth a firebrand, watching Hari. ²⁵It licked the two corners of its mouth with its double-forked tongue, and its look was a terrible fire of poison; and he went round it in play, as the king of birds does, and it circled too, watching for its moment. ²⁶So, when its strength was spent by the circling, the first one bent down its high shoulders and climbed up on its broad heads; and with the lotuses of his feet reddened by the touch of the mass of jewels on them, the first teacher of all the arts danced.

²⁷Seeing him ready to dance, his own gandharvas and perfected ones and gods and caranas and the wives of the gods came up at once, gladly, with drums and small drums and kettledrums, with playing and singing, with offerings of flowers and with praises. ²⁸Dear one, whichever head of the hundred-and-one-headed one did not bow, he trod down with the falling of his feet, holding a hard rod. And the snake, its life running out, reeling, vomiting terrible blood from its mouths and its nostrils, came to the greatest wretchedness. ²⁹Whichever head rose up as it spat venom from its eyes and hissed aloud in its rage, the ancient Person put down, dancing and bending it under his foot; and here it was as though he were being worshipped with flowers.

³⁰The umbrellas of its hoods were broken by that strange wild dance, and it vomited much blood from its mouths, king, its body broken; and remembering the teacher of all that moves and does not move, the ancient Person, Narayana, it went to him in its mind for shelter.