The moat of Sagara's sons
The sixty thousand sons of Sagara dug it round the mountain with the staff-jewel, a thousand yojana deep, and Jahnu filled it from the Gaṅgā. The Nāgas whose homes it split burnt them for it.
Two ages after Bharata, Sagara's sixty thousand sons, Jahnu at their head, came to Aṣṭāpada to worship and stayed to guard it. With the staff-jewel they "dug the moat a thousand yojanas in depth" round the mountain's foot, "terrifying as Pātāla" — and the digging "split open the homes of the Nāgas", who came up in terror "like the circle of sea-monsters at the ocean being churned".
Then Jahnu "split the bank of the Gaṅgā" with the staff and brought her to fill it, her waves "like mountain-peaks thrown up", "making the fissure made by the staff twice as wide". For that she was called Jāhnavī. The Nāgas' king, Jvalanaprabha, warned them once and, when they went on, burnt all sixty thousand where they stood.
A thousand yojana against terraces a yojana apart: the moat is a hundred and twenty-five times deeper than the mountain is tall, and SCRIPTURE SCALE on the map draws exactly that. Its width is not recorded.
Measurements and counts
| Depth | 1,000 yojana |
|---|---|
| Dug with | the staff-jewel |
| By | the 60,000 sons of Sagara, Jahnu first |
| Filled from | the Gaṅgā — hence Jāhnavī |
| Width | not recorded |
| Their end | burnt by the Nāga Jvalanaprabha |