Since Hindoo women, in spite of their altruistic training, are
prevented by their lack of culture or virtue (the domestic virtuous
women have no culture and the cultured bayadères have no virtue) from
rising to the heights of sentimental love, it would be hopeless to
expect the amazingly selfish, unsympathetic and cruel men to do so,
despite their intellectual culture. Among all the seven hundred poems
culled by Hâla there are only two or three which even hint at the
higher phases of love in masculine bosoms. Inasmuch as No. 383 tells
us that even "the male elephant, though tormented by great hunger,
thinking of his beloved wife, allows the juicy lotos-stalk to wither
in his trunk," one could hardly expect of man less than the sentiment
expressed in No. 576: "He who has a faithful love considers himself
contented even in misfortune, whereas without his love he is unhappy
though he possess the earth." Another poem indicating that Hindoo men
may share with women a strong feeling of amorous monopolism is No.
498:
"He regards only her countenance, and she, too, is
quite intoxicated at sight of him. Both of them,
satisfied with one another, act as if in the whole
world there were no other women or men."
But as a rule the men are depicted as being fickle, even more so than
the women. A frequent complaint of the girls is that the men forget
whom they happen to be caressing and call them by another girl's name.
More frequent still are the complaints of neglect or desertion. One of
these, No. 46, suggests the praises of night sung in the mediaeval
legend of Tristan and Isolde:
"To-morrow morning, my beloved, the hard-hearted goes
away--so people say. O sacred night! do lengthen so
that there will be no morning for him."
At first sight the most surprising and important of Hâla's seven
hundred poems seems to be No. 567:
"Only over me, the iron-hearted, thunder, O cloud, and
with all your might; be sure that you do not kill my
poor one with the hanging locks."
Here, for once, we have the idea of self-sacrifice--only the idea, it
is true, and not the act; but it indicates a very exceptional and
exalted state for a Hindoo even to think of such a thing. The
self-reproach of "iron-hearted" tells us, however, that the man has
been behaving selfishly and cruelly toward his sweetheart or wife, and
is feeling sorry for a moment. In such moments a Hindoo not
infrequently becomes human, especially if he expects new favors of the
maltreated woman, which she is only too willing to grant:
No. 85: "While with the breath of his mouth he cooled
one of my hands, swollen from the effect of his blow, I
put the other one laughingly around his neck."
No. 191: "By untangling the hair of her prostrate lover
from the notches of her spangles in which it had been
caught, she shows him that her heart has ceased to be
sulky."
References to such prostrations to secure forgiveness for inconstancy
or cruelty are frequent in Hindoo poems and dramas, and it is needless
to say that they are a very different thing from the disinterested
prostrations and homage of modern gallantry. True gallantry being one
of the altruistic ingredients of love, it would be useless to seek for
it among the Hindoos. Not so with hyperbole, which being simply a
magnifying of one's own sensations and an expression of extravagant
feeling of any kind, forms, as we know, a phase of sensual as well as
of sentimental love. The eager desire for a girl's favor makes her
breath and all her attributes seem delicious not only to man but to
inanimate things. The following, with the finishing touches applied by
the German translator, approaches modern poetic sentiment more closely
than any other of Hâla's songs:
No. 13: "O you who are skilled in cooking! Do not be
angry (that the fire fails to burn). The fire does not
burn, smokes only, in order to drink in (long) the
breath of (your) mouth, perfumed like red pâtela
blossoms."
In the use of hyperbole it is very difficult to avoid the step from
the sublime to the ridiculous. The author of No. 153 had a happy
thought when he sang that his beloved was so perfect a beauty that no
one had ever been able to see her whole body because the eye refused
to leave whatever part it first alighted on. This pretty notion is
turned into unconscious burlesque by the author of No. 274, who
complains,
"How can I describe her from whose limbs the eyes that
see them cannot tear themselves away, like a weak cow
from the mud she is sticking in."
Hardly less grotesque to our Western taste is the favorite boast (No.
211 _et passim_) that the moon is making vain efforts to shine as
brightly as the beloved's face. It is easier for us to sympathize with
the Hindoo poets when they express their raptures over the eyes or
locks of their beloved:
No. 470: "Other beauties too have in their faces
beautiful wide black eyes, with long lashes, but they
cannot cast such glances as you do."
No. 77: "I think of her countenance with her locks
floating loosely about it as she shook her head when I
seized her lip--like unto a lotos flower surrounded by
a swarm of (black) bees attracted by its fragrance."
Yet even these two references to personal beauty are not purely
esthetic, and in all the others the sensual aspect is more emphasized:
No. 556: "The brown girl's hair, which had succeeded in
touching her hips, weeps drops of water, as it were,
now that she comes out of the bath, as if from fear of
now being tied up again."
No. 128: "As by a miracle, as by a treasure, as in
heaven, as a kingdom, as a drink of ambrosia, was I
affected when I (first) saw her without any clothing."
No. 473: "For the sake of the dark-eyed girls whose
hips and thighs are visible through their wet dresses
when they bathe in the afternoon, does Kama [the god of
love] wield his bow."
Again and again the poets express their raptures over exaggerated
busts and hips, often in disgustingly coarse comparisons--lines which
cannot be quoted here.[275]