Quite as artificial and unsentimental as the notions of the Hindoos
concerning the symptoms of love is their conception of their god of
love, Kama, the husband of Lust. His bow is made of sugar-cane, its
string a row of bees, and his arrow-tips are red flower-buds. Spring
is his bosom friend, and he rides on a parrot or the sea-monster
Makara. He is also called Ananga--the bodiless--because Siwa once
burned him up with the fire that flashed from his third eye for
disturbing him in his devotions by awakening in him love for Parwati.
Sakuntala's lover wails that Kama's arrows are "not flowers, but hard
as diamond." Agnimitra declares that the Creator made his beloved "the
poison-steeped arrow of the God of Love;" and again, he says: "The
softest and the sharpest things are united in you, O Kama." Urvasi's
royal lover complains that his "heart is pierced by Kama's arrow," and
in _Malati and Madhava_ we are told that "a cruel god no doubt is
Kama;" while No. 329 of Ilâla's love-poems declares:
"The arrows of Kama are most diverse in their
effects--though made of flowers, very hard; though not
coming into direct contact, insufferably hot; and
though piercing, yet causing delight."
Our familiarity with Greek and Roman literature has made us so
accustomed to the idea of a Cupid awakening love by shooting arrows
that we fail to realize how entirely fanciful, not to say whimsical,
this conceit is. It would be odd, indeed, if the Hindoo poets had
happened on the same fancy as the Greeks of their own accord; but
there is no reason to suppose that they did. Kama is one of the later
gods of the Indian Pantheon, and there is every reason to believe that
the Hindoos borrowed him from the Greeks, as the Romans did. In
_Sakuntala_ (27) there is a reference to the Greek women who form the
king's body-guard; in _Urvasi_ (70) to a slave of Greek descent; and
there are many things in the Hindoo drama that betray Greek influence.
Besides being artificial and borrowed, Kama is entirely sensual. Kama
means "gratification of the senses,"[281] and of all the epithets
bestowed on their god of love by the Hindoos none rises distinctly
above sensual ideas. Dowson (147) has collated these epithets; they
are: "the beautiful," "the inflamer," "lustful," "desirous," "the
happy," "the gay, or wanton," "deluder," "the lamp of honey, or of
spring," "the bewilderer," "the crackling fire," "the stalk of
passion," "the weapon of beauty," "the voluptuary," "remembrance,"
"fire," "the handsome."[282]
The same disregard of sentimental, devotional, and altruistic elements
is shown in the Ten Stages of Love-Sickness as conceived by the
Hindoos: (1) desire; (2) thinking of her (his) beauty; (3) reminiscent
revery; (4) boasting of her (his) excellence; (5) excitement; (6)
lamentations; (7) distraction; (8) illness; (9) insensibility; (10)
death.[283]