The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section 22

Section XXII. ( Astika Parva continued. )

"The Nagas after a debate arrived at the conclusion that they should do their mother's bidding, for if she failed in obtaining her desire she might burn them all abandoning her affection; on the other hand if she were graciously inclined, the magnanimous one might free them from her curse. They said, 'We will certainly render the horse's tail black.' And it is said that they then went and became as hairs in the horse's tail.

"In the meantime, the two co-wives had laid the wager. And having laid the wager, O excellent of Brahmanas, the two sisters, Kadru and Vinata, the daughters of Daksha, proceeded in great delight along the sky to the other side of the ocean. And on their way they saw the Ocean, that receptacle of waters, incapable of being easily disturbed, mightily agitated all on a sudden by the wind, and roaring tremendously. Abounding with fishes capable of swallowing the whale (timi) and full of makaras; containing also creatures of various forms computed by thousands; frightful from the presence of horrible monsters, inaccessible, deep, and terrible; the mind of all kinds of gems; the home of Varna (the water-god), the wonderful habitation of the Nagas; the lord of rivers; the abode of the sub-terranean fire; the residence of the Asuras and of many dreadful creatures; the reservoir of waters; not subject to decay; romantic, and wonderful; the great mine of the amrita of the celestials; immeasurable and inconceivable; containing waters that are holy; filled to the brim by many thousands of great rivers; dancing as it were in waves; such the ocean, full of liquid waves, vast as the expanse of the sky, deep, of body lighted with the flames of sub-terranean fire, and roaring, which the sisters quickly passed over."

And so ends the twenty-second Section in the Astika of the Adi Parva.