Skandapurana 4.3.67.3

4.3.67.3

Is it truly the submarine fire itself performing austerity in bodily form, / as motionless as a pillar, pure like the mind of the virtuous? / Or rather, having resorted to this brahminical body, do all splendors / cultivate the supreme abode to attain the state of absolute peace? / The sun burns intensely, and the fire itself is scorched, / through whose fierce austerity even the flickering [lightning] has become steady to this day! / In whose hermitage even beasts of prey are seen all around, / their forms turned gentle, having abandoned their inborn enmity: / The elephant fearlessly scratches the lion with its trunk; / the lion with its noble mane sleeps in the lap of the śarabha; / the boar, though his bristles stand on end, having left his herd, / moves about amidst the wild dogs, his gaze fixed on mustā grass, full of strength; / even the boar does not root up the earth as he does elsewhere, / restrained by fear because all of Kāśī is made of the liṅga; / taking a young pig onto its lap, oh, the hyena fondles it; / brushing aside the tiger cubs, a young fawn, / wagging its tail, drinks with frothy mouth from the tigress; / while a hairy bear sleeps, a monkey with restless fingers / seeks out lice again and again and eats them with the tips of his teeth; / the troop-leading baboons, black-bodied with red faces, / abandon the enmity natural to their species and disport together in one place; / hares frolic with wolves, continually rolling over their backs; / a mouse, its face twitching, scratches the ear of the cat; / curled in the train of a peacock's tail, a cat sleeps most peacefully; / a serpent rubs its throat against the throat of a peacock; / leaping and springing playfully, the mongoose rolls / on the back of the serpent's hood, abandoning the enmity natural to its race; / seeing a mouse moving right before its mouth, / the serpent, though blinded by hunger, does not seize it, nor does the mouse fear it;