DESCRIPTION OF A TRAIN OF DANGERS.
Argument. The King’s residence at the Chandála’s abode and his
adventures during sixty years at that place.
The king continued:—What more shall I say of that festivity, which had
quite subdued my soul? I was thenceforward named as Pushta-Pukkusha
or cherished Chandála by my fellows. (Beng-ghar-jámái or home-bred
bridegroom).
2. After the festivity had lasted for a week, and I had passed full
eight months at that place; my wife had her pubertal efflorescence, and
afterwards her conception also (garbhádhána and garbha).
3. She was delivered of a daughter which is the cause of woe, as a
danger is the spring of calamities. (The parallel passage is well known
_dáriká dukhkha dáyika_, a daughter is the source of grief). This
daughter grew up as soon as the growth of the cares and sorrows of the
ignorant. (The wise neither care nor sorrow for any earthly matter).
4. She brought forth again a black boy in course of three years; as the
fruit of folly raises the false expectation of fruition. (_i.e._ We are
often frustrated in our hopes in our boys).
5. She again gave birth to a daughter and then to another boy; and thus
I became an old Chandála, with a large family in that forest land.
6. In this manner passed many years with these shoots of my woe in that
place; as a Brahmicide has to pass long years of torment in hell-fire.
(Here is a piece of priestcraft in the augmented torment for killing a
Brahman as any other man).
7. I had to undergo all the pains of heat and cold, of chill-winds and
frost, without any help to be had in that dreary forest; and as an old
tortoise is constrained to move about in the mud of a pool for ever.
8. Being burthen with the cares of my family, and troubled by anxieties
of my mind; I saw my increasing afflictions like a conflagration rising
all about me.
9. Clad in bark and wrapt in old and ragged cloths, with a covering of
grass and a straw hat on my head, I bore loads of logs from the woods;
as we bear the burden of sins on our backs and heads. (See Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress).
10. I had to pass full many a live-long year, under the shade of
_dhavalí_ trees; with no other cloth or covering on me than an old
tattered, dirty and stinking _Kaupina_, which was beset by fleas and
leeches. (Kaupina a piece of rag covering the lower secret parts of the
body as that of Fakirs and Yogis).
11. I was exposed to the chill cold winds, in all my toils to support my
family; and lay like a frog in some cave in the woods, under the keen
blasts of winter.
12. The many quarrels and bickerings, and the sorrows and wailings, to
which I was often exposed at home and abroad, made my blood to gush out
in tears from my weeping eyes.
13. We passed the nights on marshy grounds in the jungle, and being
deluged by the raining clouds, we took our shelter in the caverns of
mountains, with no other food than the roasted flesh of bears.
14. Afterwards the rainy season of sowing being over, and the dark
drizzling clouds having dispersed in air, I was driven from my abode, by
the unkindness of my relations and continued contention with others.
15. Being thus in dread of every body in the neighbourhood, I removed
myself to the house of another man, where I dwelt with my wife and
prattling children for some years.
16. Then vexed by the scolding of the termagant Chandálí, and the
threats of the villainous Chandálas; my face became as pale as the
waning moon under the shadow of Ráhu (the ascending node).
17. I was bit and scratched by the teeth and nails of my wife, as if my
flesh and muscles were torn and gnawed down under the grinders of a
tigress; and I was as one caught by or sold to a hellish fiend, and
thought myself as changed to an infernal being also.
18. I suffered under the torrents of snow thrown out of the caverns of
the Himálaya, and was exposed to the showers of frost, that fell
continually in the dewy season.
19. I felt on my naked body the iron shafts of rain, as darts let fly
from the bow of death; and in my sickly and decrepit old age, I had to
live upon the roots of withered vegetables.
20. I dug them out plentifully from the woodland grounds and eat them
with a zest, as a fortunate man has in tasting his dainty dishes of well
cooked meat.
21. I took my food apart and untouched by any body, for fear of being
polluted by the touch of a vile and base born family; and because the
pungency of my unsavoury diet, made my mouth wry at every morsel.
22. While I was famishing in this manner, I saw others had their venison
and sheep’s flesh bought from other places for their food; and who
pampered their bodies also with the flesh they cut out from other living
animals and devoured raw with great zest.
23. They bought animal flesh sold in iron pots and stuck in spits, for
undergoing migrations into as many thousand bodies as they have killed
and fed upon. (This is the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis of the
soul, as described in Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World).
24. I often repaired to the garden grounds of the Chandálas, with my
spade and basket in the cool of the evening, in order to collect the raw
flesh, which had been cast about in the dirt, for making any food of
them.
25. But the time seemed to turn favourable to me, when I was about to be
cast into hell, by leading me to take refuge of the mountain caverns,
and seek my supportance there by the roots and plants growing therein.
26. In this state, I was met by my good chance, on some Chandálas
appearing in person before me, and driving away the village dogs with
their clubs from before them (to the woods).
27. They gave my wife and children some bad rice as the villagers used
to take, and we passed the night under the shade of a palm tree, whose
withered leaves were rattling with the rain drops, that fell in showers
upon them.
28. We passed the night in company with the sylvan apes, with our teeth
clattering with cold; and the hairs of our bodies standing on their
ends, like a thousand thorns through coldness.
29. The rain drops decorated our bodies with granules of vivid pearls,
and our bellies were as lean and lank like an empty cloud through hunger
and for want of food.
30. Then there rose a quarrel in this diresome forest, between me and my
wife; and we kept answering one another, with our clattering teeth and
ruddy eyes by effect of the cold.
31. My foul and dirty person resembled that of a dark black demon, and
we roved about the borders of rivers and brooks, to fish with a rod and
hook in my hand.
32. I wandered also with a trap in my hand, like Yama with his noose at
the desolation of the earth; and caught and killed and drank the heart
blood of the deer in my hunger and thirst.
33. I sucked the warm heart blood, as the milk of my mother’s breast, at
the time of famishing; and being besmeared in blood, I stood as a blood
sucking demon in the cemetery.
34. The Vetálas of the woods fled before me, as they do from the furies
of the forests; and I set my snares and nets in the woods, for catching
the deer and birds of the air.
35. As people spread the nets of their wives and children, only to be
entangled in them in the false hope of happiness; so did I spread my net
of thread, to beguile the birds to their destruction.
36. Though worried and worn out in the nets of worldly cares, and
surrounded on every side by the miseries of our vicious lives; yet do
our minds take their delight, in the perpetration of cruel and foul acts
(to the injury of others).
37. Our wishes are stretched as far and wide, as a running river
overflows its banks in the rainy season; but the objects of our desires
fly afar from us, as snakes hide themselves from the snake eating
_Karabhas_ by their own sagacity. (The Karabha is a quadruped of the
weasel kind, and is called _gohadgel_—in Bengali).
38. We have cast off kindness from our hearts, as the snake leaves off
his slough; and take a delight to let fly the hissing arrows of our
malice, as the thunder storm betides all animals.
39. Men are delighted at the sight of cooling clouds, at the end of the
hot season; but they avoid at a distance the rough briny shore spreading
wide before them. (So men hail their happiness, and avoid their
troubles).
40. But I underwent many a difficulty, which multiplied as thickly upon
me, as the weeds growing in dales; and I moved about all the corners of
that hellish spot, during my destined time. (What is decreed, cannot be
avoided).
41. I have sown the seeds of sin under the rain-water of my ignorance,
to grow speedily as thorns on my way. I have laid hidden snares for the
unwary innocent, to secure myself in the mountain caves.
42. I have caught and killed the innocent deer in the trap; to feed upon
its flesh; and have killed the _chouri_ kine, to lay my head on the hair
hanging down their necks.
43. I slept unconscious of myself in my ignorance, as Vishnu lay on his
huge hydra; I lay with my out-stretched legs and limbs in the brown
cell, resounding to the yell of wild beasts abroad.
44. I lay my body also, on the frost of a cave in the marshy ground of
Vindhyá; and wrapped my swarthy form in a tattered quilt, hanging down
my neck and full of fleas.
45. I bore it on my back, as a bear bears the long bristles upon him
even in the hot season; and suffered the heat of the wild fire, which
burnt away many wild animals which perished in groups as in the last
conflagration of the world.
46. My wife bore her young ones, both for our pleasure as well as pain:
as the food of the glutton, is both for his satiety and sickness; and
the influence of planets, is for our good and evil also.
47. Thus I the only son of a king, had to pass sixty painful years of my
life, as so many kalpa ages of long duration.
48. I raved sometimes in my rage, and wept at others in my bitter grief;
I fared on coarse meals, and dwelt, alas! in the abodes of vulgar
Chandálas. Thus I passed so many years of my misery at that place, as
one fastened to the fetters of his insatiable desires, is doomed to toil
and moil for naught until his death. (Bound to our desires, we are
dragged to the grave).