The wall of water
Down the middle of the salt sea stands a ridge of water 10,000 yojana wide and 16,000 yojana high, and it never falls.
From each shore the floor of Lavaṇa slopes down for 95,000 yojana until the water is 1,000 deep — and then, over the last 10,000 yojana in the middle, the sea does not deepen but rises: a standing crest of salt water 16,000 yojana high, sixteen times the depth of the sea it stands in, taller than any mountain of Jambūdvīpa except Meru.
Twice a day it swells and subsides. The cause is beneath it: the four great vessels sunk into the floor, whose wind breathes and pushes the water above them up and lets it fall. How far it rises the sources reached do not say, and this atlas does not guess.
That it stands at all is the work of the Velandhara — a lakh and three-quarters of nāga gods — who hold the sea to its bound so that it never spills over Jambūdvīpa. The mountains they rule from stand in the sea at 42,000 yojana from the shore.
Measurements and counts
| Width | 10,000 yojana |
|---|---|
| Height | 16,000 yojana |
| Sea depth beneath | 1,000 yojana |
| Rises | twice a day |
| Height of the rise | not stated in the sources reached |
| Held by | 1,74,000 nāgakumāras |