obtain that book, I would restore my beloved to life, and give up
this course of uncomfortable postures and difficulty of breathing.’
With this resolution he sat down to his food, and remained in the
house.
At length night came, and after a time, all having eaten supper, and
gone to their sleeping-places, lay down. The Jogi also went to rest
in one part of the house, but did not allow sleep to close his eyes.
When he thought that a fourth part of the hours of darkness had sped,
and that all were deep in slumber, then he got up very quietly, and
going into the room of the master of the house, he took down the book
from the beam-ends and went his ways.
[Illustration: Madhusadan proceeded to make his incantations, despite
terrible sights in the air.]
Madhusadan, the Jogi, went straight to the place where the beautiful
Sweet Jasmine had been burned. There he found his two rivals sitting
talking together and comparing experiences. They recognised him at
once, and cried aloud to him, ‘Brother! thou also hast been wandering
over the world; tell us this—hast thou learned anything which can
profit us?’ He replied, ‘I have learned the science of restoring the
dead to life;’ upon which they both exclaimed, ‘If thou hast really
learned such knowledge, restore our beloved to life.’
Madhusadan proceeded to make his incantations, despite terrible
sights in the air, the cries of jackals, owls, crows, cats, asses,
vultures, dogs, and lizards, and the wrath of innumerable invisible
beings, such as messengers of Yama (Pluto), ghosts, devils, demons,
imps, fiends, devas, succubi, and others. All the three lovers
drawing blood from their own bodies offered it to the goddess Chandi,
repeating the following incantation, ‘Hail! supreme delusion! Hail!
goddess of the universe! Hail! thou who fulfillest the desires of
all. May I presume to offer thee the blood of my body; and wilt thou
deign to accept it, and be propitious towards me!’
They then made a burnt-offering of their flesh, and each one prayed,
‘Grant me, O goddess! to see the maiden alive again, in proportion to
the fervency with which I present thee with mine own flesh, invoking
thee to be propitious to me. Salutation to thee again and again,
under the mysterious syllables ang! ang!’
Then they made a heap of the bones and the ashes, which had been
carefully kept by Tribikram and Baman. As the Jogi Madhusadan
proceeded with his incantation, a white vapour arose from the ground,
and, gradually condensing, assumed a perispiritual form—the fluid
envelope of the soul. The three spectators felt their blood freeze
as the bones and the ashes were gradually absorbed into the before
shadowy shape, and they were restored to themselves only when the
maiden Madhuvati begged to be taken home to her mother.
Then Kama, God of Love, blinded them, and they began fiercely to
quarrel about who should have the beautiful maid. Each wanted to be
her sole master. Tribikram declared the bones to be the great fact
of the incantation; Baman swore by the ashes; and Madhusadan laughed
them both to scorn. No one could decide the dispute; the wisest
doctors were all nonplussed; and as for the Raja—well! we do not go
for wit or wisdom to kings. I wonder if the great Raja Vikram could
decide which person the woman belonged to?
‘To Baman, the man who kept her ashes, fellow!’ exclaimed the hero,
not a little offended by the free remarks of the fiend.
[Illustration: Vikram placed his bundle upon the ground, and seated
himself cross-legged before it.]
‘Yet,’ rejoined the Baital impudently, ‘if Tribikram had not
preserved her bones how could she have been restored to life? And
if Madhusadan had not learned the science of restoring the dead to
life how could she have been revivified? At least, so it seems to me.
But perhaps your royal wisdom may explain.’
‘Devil!’ said the king angrily, ‘Tribikram, who preserved her bones,
by that act placed himself in the position of her son; therefore he
could not marry her. Madhusadan, who, restoring her to life, gave her
life, was evidently a father to her; he could not, then, become her
husband. Therefore she was the wife of Baman, who had collected her
ashes.’
‘I am happy to see, O king,’ exclaimed the Vampire, ‘that, in spite
of my presentiments, we are not to part company just yet. These
little trips I hold to be, like lovers’ quarrels, the prelude to
closer union. With your leave we will still practise a little
suspension.’
And so saying, the Baital again ascended the tree, and was suspended
there.
‘Would it not be better,’ thought the monarch, after recapturing and
shouldering the fugitive, ‘for me to sit down this time and listen
to the fellow’s story? Perhaps the double exercise of walking and
thinking confuses me.’
With this idea Vikram placed his bundle upon the ground, well tied up
with turban and waistband; then he seated himself cross-legged before
it, and bade his son do the same.
The Vampire strongly objected to this measure, as it was contrary, he
asserted, to the covenant between him and the Raja. Vikram replied
by citing the very words of the agreement, proving that there was no
allusion to walking or sitting.
Then the Baital became sulky, and swore that he would not utter
another word. But he, too, was bound by the chain of destiny.
Presently he opened his lips, with the normal prelude that he was
about to tell a true tale.
THE VAMPIRE’S SEVENTH STORY.
SHOWING THE EXCEEDING FOLLY OF MANY WISE FOOLS.
The Baital resumed.
Of all the learned Brahmans in the learnedest university of Gaur
(Bengal) none was so celebrated as Vishnu Swami. He could write
verse as well as prose in dead languages, not very correctly,
but still, better than all his fellows—which constituted him a
distinguished writer. He had history, theosophy, and the four Vedas
or Scriptures at his fingers’ ends, he was skilled in the argute
science of Nyasa or Disputation, his mind was a mine of Pauranic or
cosmogonico-traditional lore, handed down from the ancient fathers to
the modern fathers: and he had written bulky commentaries, exhausting
all that tongue of man has to say, upon the obscure text of some
old philosopher whose works upon ethics, poetry, and rhetoric were
supposed by the sages of Gaur to contain the germs of everything
knowable. His fame went over all the country; yea, from country to
country. He was a sea of excellent qualities, the father and mother
of Brahmans, cows, and women, and the horror of loose persons,
cut-throats, courtiers, and courtesans. As a benefactor he was equal
to Karna, most liberal of heroes. In regard to truth he was equal to
the veracious king Yudhishtira.
True, he was sometimes at a loss to spell a common word in his
mother tongue, and whilst he knew to a fingerbreadth how many palms
and paces the sun, the moon, and all the stars are distant from the
earth, he would have been puzzled to tell you where the region called
Yavana[119] lies. Whilst he could enumerate, in strict chronological
succession, every important event that happened five or six million
years before he was born, he was profoundly ignorant of those that
occurred in his own day. And once he asked a friend seriously, if a
cat let loose in the jungle would not in time become a tiger.
[119] The land of Greece.
Yet did all the members of alma mater Kasi, Pandits[120] as well
as students, look with awe upon Vishnu Swami’s livid cheeks, and
lack-lustre eyes, grimed hands and soiled cottons.
[120] Savans, professors. So in the old saying, ‘Hanta, Pandit
Sansara.’—Alas! the world is learned! This a little antedates
the well-known schoolmaster.
Now it so happened that this wise and pious Brahmanic peer had four
sons, whom he brought up in the strictest and most serious way. They
were taught to repeat their prayers long before they understood a
word of them, and when they reached the age of four[121] they had
read a variety of hymns and spiritual songs. Then they were set to
learn by heart precepts that inculcate sacred duties, and arguments
relating to theology, abstract and concrete.
[121] Children are commonly sent to school at the age of five.
Girls are not taught to read, under the common idea that they
will become widows if they do.
Their father, who was also their tutor, sedulously cultivated, as
all the best works upon education advise, their implicit obedience,
humble respect, warm attachment, and the virtues and sentiments
generally. He praised them secretly and reprehended them openly, to
exercise their humility. He derided their looks, and dressed them
coarsely, to preserve them from vanity and conceit. Whenever they
anticipated a ‘treat,’ he punctually disappointed them, to teach them
self-denial. Often when he had promised them a present, he would
revoke, not break his word, in order that discipline might have a
name and habitat in his household. And knowing by experience how much
stronger than love is fear, he frequently threatened, browbeat, and
overawed them with the rod and the tongue, with the terrors of this
world, and with the horrors of the next, that they might be kept in
the right way by dread of falling into the bottomless pits that bound
it on both sides.
At the age of six they were transferred to the Chatushpati,[122] or
school. Every morning the teacher and his pupils assembled in the hut
where the different classes were called up by turns. They laboured
till noon, and were allowed only two hours, a moiety of the usual
time, for bathing, eating, sleep, and worship, which took up half
the period. At 3 P.M. they resumed their labours, repeating to the
tutor what they had learned by heart, and listening to the meaning of
it: this lasted till twilight. They then worshipped, ate and drank
for an hour: after which came a return of study, repeating the day’s
lessons, till 10 P.M.
[122] Meaning the place of reading the four Shastras.
In their rare days of ease—for the learned priest, mindful of
the words of the wise, did not wish to dull them by everlasting
work—they were enjoined to disport themselves with the gravity
and the decorum that befit young Samditats, not to engage in night
frolics, not to use free jests or light expressions, not to draw
pictures on the walls, not to eat honey, flesh, and sweet substances
turned acid, not to talk to little girls at the well-side, on no
account to wear sandals, carry an umbrella, or handle a die even for
love, and by no means to steal their neighbours’ mangos.
As they advanced in years their attention during work time was
unremittingly directed to the Vedas. Worldly studies were almost
excluded, or to speak more correctly, whenever worldly studies were
brought upon the carpet, they were so evil entreated, that they well
nigh lost all form and feature. History became ‘The Annals of India
on Brahminical Principles,’ opposed to the Buddhistical; geography
‘The Lands of the Vedas,’ none other being deemed worthy of notice;
and law, ‘The Institutes of Manu,’ then almost obsolete, despite
their exceeding sanctity.
But Jatu-harini[123] had evidently changed these children before they
were born; and Shani[124] must have been in the ninth mansion when
they came to light.
[123] A certain goddess who plays tricks with mankind. If a son
when grown up act differently from what his parents did, people
say that he has been changed in the womb.
[124] Shani is the planet Saturn, which has an exceedingly
baleful influence in India as elsewhere.
Each youth as he attained the mature age of twelve was formally
entered at the University of Kasi, where, without loss of time, the
first became a gambler, the second a confirmed libertine, the third
a thief, and the fourth a high Buddhist, or in other words an utter
atheist.
Here King Vikram frowned at his son, a hint that he had better not
behave himself as the children of highly moral and religious parents
usually do. The young prince understood him, and briefly remarking
that such things were common in distinguished Brahman families, asked
the Baital what he meant by the word ‘Atheist?’
Of a truth (answered the Vampire) it is most difficult to explain.
The sages assign to it three or four several meanings: first, one
who denies that the gods exist; secondly, one who owns that the gods
exist but denies that they busy themselves with human affairs; and
thirdly, one who believes in the gods and in their providence, but
also believes that they are easily to be set aside. Similarly some
atheists derive all things from dead and unintelligent matter; others
from matter living and energetic but without sense or will; others
from matter with forms and qualities generable and conceptible; and
others from a plastic and methodical nature. Thus the Vishnu Swamis
of the world have invested the subject with some confusion. The
simple, that is to say, the mass of mortality, have confounded that
confusion by reproachfully applying the word atheist to those whose
opinions differ materially from their own.
But I being at present, perhaps happily for myself, a Vampire, and
having, just now, none of these human or inhuman ideas, meant simply
to say that the pious priest’s fourth son being great at second and
small in the matter of first causes, adopted to their fullest extent
the doctrines of the philosophical Bauddhas.[125] Nothing according
to him exists but the five elements, earth, water, fire, air (or
wind), and vacuum, and from the last proceeded the penultimate,
and so forth. With the sage Patanjali, he held the universe to
have the power of perpetual progression.[126] He called that Matra
(matter), which is an eternal and infinite principle, beginningless
and endless. Organisation, intelligence, and design, he opined are
inherent in matter as growth is in a tree. He did not believe in
soul or spirit, because it could not be detected in the body, and
because it was a departure from physiological analogy. The idea ‘I
am,’ according to him, was not the identification of spirit with
matter, but a product of the mutation of matter in this cloud-like,
error-formed world. He believed in Substance (Sat) and scoffed at
Unsubstance (Asat). He asserted the subtlety and globularity of atoms
which are uncreate. He made mind and intellect a mere secretion of
the brain, or rather words expressing not a thing, but a state of
things. Reason was to him developed instinct, and life an element of
the atmosphere affecting certain organisms. He held good and evil to
be merely geographical and chronological expressions, and he opined
that what is called Evil is mostly an active and transitive form
of Good. Law was his great Creator of all things, but he refused
a creator of law, because such a creator would require another
creator, and so on in a quasi-interminable series up to absurdity.
This reduced his law to a manner of haphazard. To those who, arguing
against it, asked him their favourite question, How often might a man
after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag fling them out upon
the ground before they would fall into an exact poem? he replied that
the calculation was beyond his arithmetic, but that the man had only
to jumble and fling long enough inevitably to arrive at that end.
He rejected the necessity as well as the existence of revelation,
and he did not credit the miracles of Krishna, because, according
to him, nature never suspends her laws, and, moreover, he had never
seen aught supernatural. He ridiculed the idea of Mahapralaya, or
the great destruction, for as the world had no beginning, so it will
have no end. He objected to absorption, facetiously observing with
the sage Jamadagni, that it was pleasant to eat sweetmeats, but that
for his part he did not wish to become the sweetmeat itself. He would
not believe that Vishnu had formed the universe out of the wax in his
ears. He positively asserted that trees are not bodies in which the
consequences of merit and demerit are received. Nor would he conclude
that to men were attached rewards and punishments from all eternity.
He made light of the Sanskara, or sacrament. He admitted Satwa, Raja,
and Tama,[127] but only as properties of matter. He acknowledged
gross matter (Sthula-sharir), and atomic matter (Shukshma-sharir),
but not Linga-sharir, or the archetype of bodies. To doubt all things
was the foundation of his theory, and to scoff at all who would not
doubt was the cornerstone of his practice. In debate he preferred
logical and mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical ‘because’
in answer to his ‘why?’ He was full of morality and natural religion,
which some say is no religion at all. He gained the name of atheist
by declaring with Gotama that there are innumerable worlds, that the
earth has nothing beneath it but the circumambient air, and that the
core of the globe is incandescent. And he was called a practical
atheist—a worse form, apparently—for supporting the following
dogma: ‘that though creation may attest that a creator has been, it
supplies no evidence to prove that a creator still exists.’ On which
occasion, Shiromani, a nonplussed theologian, asked him, ‘By whom and
for what purpose wast thou sent on earth?’ The youth scoffed at the
word ‘sent,’ and replied, ‘Not being thy Supreme Intelligence, or
Infinite Nihility, I am unable to explain the phenomenon.’ Upon which
he quoted—
How sunk in darkness Gaur must be
Whose guide is blind Shiromani!
[125] The Eleatic or Materialistic school of Hindu philosophy,
which agrees to explode an intelligent separate First Cause.
[126] The writings of this school give an excellent view of the
‘progressive system,’ which has popularly been asserted to be a
modern idea. But Hindu philosophy seems to have exhausted every
fancy that can spring from the brain of man.
[127] Tama is the natural state of matter, Raja is passion acting
upon nature, and Satwa is excellence. These are the three gunas
or qualities of matter.
At length it so happened that the four young men, having frequently
been surprised in flagrant delict, were summoned to the dread
presence of the university Gurus,[128] who addressed them as
follows:—
[128] Spiritual preceptors and learned men.
‘There are four different characters in the world: he who perfectly
obeys the commands; he who practises the commands, but follows evil;
he who does neither good nor evil; and he who does nothing but evil.
The third character, it is observed, is also an offender, for he
neglects that which he ought to observe. But ye all belong to the
fourth category.’
Then turning to the elder they said:
‘In works written upon the subject of government it is advised,
“Cut off the gambler’s nose and ears, hold up his name to public
contempt, and drive him out of the country, that he may thus become
an example to others. For they who play must more often lose than
win; and losing, they must either pay or not pay. In the latter case
they forfeit caste, in the former they utterly reduce themselves.
And though a gambler’s wife and children are in the house, do
not consider them to be so, since it is not known when they will
be lost.[129] Thus he is left in a state of perfect not-twoness
(solitude), and he will be reborn in hell.” O young man! thou hast
set a bad example to others, therefore shalt thou immediately
exchange this university for a country life.’
[129] Under certain limitations, gambling is allowed by Hindu
law, and the winner has power over the person and property of the
loser. No ‘debts of honour’ in Hindostan!
Then they spoke to the second offender thus:—
‘The wise shun woman, who can fascinate a man in the twinkling of
an eye; but the foolish, conceiving an affection for her, forfeit
in the pursuit of pleasure their truthfulness, reputation, and good
disposition, their way of life and mode of thought, their vows and
their religion. And to such the advice of their spiritual teachers
comes amiss, whilst they make others as bad as themselves. For it
is said, “He who has lost all sense of shame, fears not to disgrace
another;” and there is the proverb, “A wild cat that devours its own
young is not likely to let a rat escape;” therefore must thou too, O
young man! quit this seat of learning with all possible expedition.’
The young man proceeded to justify himself by quotations from the
Lila-shastra, his text-book, by citing such lines as—
Fortune favours folly and force,
and by advising the elderly professors to improve their skill in the
peace and war of love. But they drove him out with execrations.
As sagely and as solemnly did the Pandits and the Gurus reprove the
thief and the atheist, but they did not dispense the words of wisdom
in equal proportions. They warned the former that petty larceny
is punishable with fine, theft on a larger scale with mutilation
of the hand, and robbery, when detected in the act, with loss of
life;[130] that for cutting purses, or for snatching them out of a
man’s waistcloth,[131] the first penalty is chopping off the fingers,
the second is the loss of the hand, and the third is death. Then
they called him a dishonour to the college, and they said, ‘Thou
art as a woman, the greatest of plunderers; other robbers purloin
property which is worthless, thou stealest the best; they plunder
in the night, thou in the day,’ and so forth. They told him that
he was a fellow who had read his Chauriya Vidya to more purpose
than his ritual.[132] And they drove him from the door as he in his
shamelessness began to quote texts about the four approved ways of
housebreaking, namely, picking out burnt bricks, cutting through
unbaked bricks, throwing water on a mud wall, and boring one of wood
with a centre-bit.
[130] Quotations from standard works on Hindu criminal law, which
in some points at least is almost as absurd as our civilised
codes.
[131] Hindus carry their money tied up in a kind of sheet, which
is wound round the waist and thrown over the shoulder.
[132] A thieves’ manual in the Sanskrit tongue; it aspires to the
dignity of a ‘Scripture.’
But they spent six mortal hours in convicting the atheist, whose
abominations they refuted by every possible argumentation: by
inference, by comparison, and by sounds, by Sruti and Smriti, i.e.
revelational and traditional, rational and evidential, physical
and metaphysical, analytical and synthetical, philosophical and
philological, historical, and so forth. But they found all their
endeavours vain. ‘For,’ it is said, ‘a man who has lost all shame,
who can talk without sense, and who tries to cheat his opponent, will
never get tired, and will never be put down.’ He declared that a
non-ad was far more probable than a monad (the active principle), or
the duad (the passive principle or matter). He compared their faith
with a bubble in the water, of which we can never predicate that
it does exist or it does not. It is, he said, unreal, as when the
thirsty mistakes the meadow mist for a pool of water. He proved the
eternity of sound.[133] He impudently recounted and justified all the
villanies of the Vamachari or left-handed sects. He told them that
they had taken up an ass’s load of religion, and had better apply to
honest industry. He fell foul of the gods; accused Yama of kicking
his own mother, Indra of tempting the wife of his spiritual guide,
and Shiva of associating with low women. Thus, he said, no one can
respect them. Do not we say when it thunders awfully, ‘the rascally
gods are dying!’ And when it is too wet, ‘these villain gods are
sending too much rain?’ Briefly, the young Brahman replied to and
harangued them all so impertinently, if not pertinently, that they,
waxing angry, fell upon him with their staves, and drove him out of
assembly.
[133] All sounds, say the Hindus, are of similar origin, and they
do not die; if they did, they could not be remembered.