"[Along the way] they saw the ocean — the receptacle of waters: full of whales and fish, teeming with makaras; inhabited by many thousands of fearsome creatures of every form, unassailable, swarming with turtles and crocodiles. [The ocean —] a mine of all gems, the abode of Varuna, the beautiful abode of serpents, the supreme lord of rivers; the abode of the subterranean fire (vadavanala) and the prison of the asuras; striking terror into all beings, a treasury of waters. Auspicious, divine, the highest mine of nectar for the immortals; immeasurable, inconceivable, with sacred and wondrous waters. Terrible, echoing with the roar of water-creatures, thundering fearsomely, with deep whirlpools, striking fear into all that lives. Stirred by the wind at its shores, heaved up by turbulence, dancing everywhere as though with upraised wave-arms; its waves swelling by the power of the moon's waxing and waning, hard to approach. [The ocean —] the birthplace of the conch Panchajanya, an unsurpassed mine of gems; its turbid waters roiled from within by the boundlessly mighty Govinda (the Lord), who raised up the earth in the form of the boar (Varaha). Its unfathomed depths, imperishable, were not reached even by the sage-brahmin Atri, who studied it for a hundred years in the netherworld (Patala). [The ocean —] the bed of Padmanabha (He whose navel bears the lotus), absorbed in the yoga-sleep of inner contemplation — the bed, at the end and beginning of the world ages (yugas), of the boundlessly radiant Vishnu. Auspicious, offering water as an oblation to the blazing fire of the mare's mouth (vadava); bottomless, shoreless, boundless, immeasurable lord of rivers, to which, as if racing one another, thousands of great rivers ceaselessly hasten. So, beholding that deep ocean, teeming with whales and makaras, roaring with the fearsome cries of water-creatures, boundless, shining like the sky — bottomless, gaping open, lit by tongues of the subterranean flame — gazing upon it, they swiftly swooped down."