his strong right arm with fatal effect and struck down some
threescore of the foes. But new swarms came on like angry hornets
buzzing round the destroyer of their nests. And when he fell,
Devasharma, who had left him for a moment to hide his beautiful wife
in the hollow of a tree, returned, and stood fighting over the body
of his friend till he also, overpowered by numbers, was thrown to
the ground. Then the wild men, drawing their knives, cut off the
heads of their helpless enemies, stripped their bodies of all their
ornaments, and departed, leaving the woman unharmed for good luck.
When Unmadini, who had been more dead than alive during the affray,
found silence succeed to the horrid din of shrieks and shouts, she
ventured to creep out of her refuge in the hollow tree. And what does
she behold? her husband and his friend are lying upon the ground,
with their heads at a short distance from their bodies. She sat down
and wept bitterly.
Presently, remembering the lesson which she had learned that very
morning, she drew forth from her bosom the bit of thread and
proceeded to use it. She approached the heads to the bodies, and tied
some of the magic string round each neck. But the shades of evening
were fast deepening, and in her agitation, confusion and terror, she
made a curious mistake by applying the heads to the wrong trunks.
After which, she again sat down, and having recited her prayers,
she pronounced, as her husband had taught her, the life-giving
incantation.
[Illustration: Then a horrid thought flashed across her mind; she
perceived her fatal mistake.]
In a moment the dead men were made alive. They opened their eyes,
shook themselves, sat up and handled their limbs as if to feel that
all was right. But something or other appeared to them all wrong.
They placed their palms upon their foreheads, and looked downwards,
and started to their feet and began to stare at their hands and
legs. Upon which they scrutinised the very scanty articles of dress
which the wild men had left upon them, and lastly one began to eye
the other with curious puzzled looks.
The wife, attributing their gestures to the confusion which one might
expect to find in the brains of men who have just undergone so great
a trial as amputation of the head must be, stood before them for a
moment or two. She then with a cry of gladness flew to the bosom of
the individual who was, as she supposed, her husband. He repulsed
her, telling her that she was mistaken. Then, blushing deeply in
spite of her other emotions, she threw both her beautiful arms round
the neck of the person who must be, she naturally concluded, the
right man. To her utter confusion, he also shrank back from her
embrace.
Then a horrid thought flashed across her mind: she perceived her
fatal mistake, and her heart almost ceased to beat.
‘This is _thy_ wife!’ cried the Brahman’s head that had been fastened
to the soldier’s body.
‘No she is _thy_ wife!’ replied the soldier’s head which had been
placed upon the Brahman’s body.
‘Then she is _my_ wife!’ rejoined the first compound creature.
‘By no means! she is _my_ wife,’ cried the second.
‘What then am I?’ asked Devasharma-Gunakar.
‘What do you think I am?’ answered Gunakar-Devasharma, with another
question.
‘Unmadini shall be _mine_,’ quoth the head.
‘You lie, she shall be _mine_,’ shouted the body.
‘Holy Yama,[160] hear the villain,’ exclaimed both of them at the
same moment.
[160] The Hindu Pluto; also called the Just King.
* * * * *
In short, having thus begun, they continued to quarrel violently,
each one declaring that the beautiful Unmadini belonged to him and to
him only. How to settle their dispute Brahma the Lord of creatures
only knows. I do not, except by cutting off their heads once more,
and by putting them in their proper places. And I am quite sure, O
Raja Vikram! that thy wits are quite unfit to answer the question,
To which of these two is the beautiful Unmadini wife? It is even
said—amongst us Baitals—that when this pair of half-husbands
appeared in the presence of the Just King, a terrible confusion
arose, each head declaiming all the sins and peccadilloes which its
body had committed, and that Yama the holy ruler himself bit his
forefinger with vexation.[161]
[161] Yama judges the dead, whose souls go to him in four hours
and forty minutes; therefore a corpse cannot be burned till after
that time. His residence is Yamalaya, and it is on the south side
of the earth; down South, as we say. (I Sam. xxv. 1, and xxx.
15.) The Hebrews, like the Hindus, held the northern parts of the
world to be higher than the southern. Hindus often joke a man who
is seen walking in that direction, and ask him where he is going.
Here the young prince Dharma Dhwaj burst out laughing at the
ridiculous idea of the wrong heads. And the warrior king, who like
single-minded fathers in general was ever in the idea that his son
had a velleity for deriding and otherwise vexing him, began a severe
course of reproof. He reminded the prince of the common saying that
merriment without cause degrades a man in the opinion of his fellows,
and indulged him with a quotation extensively used by grave fathers,
namely that the loud laugh bespeaks a vacant mind. After which he
proceeded with much pompousness to pronounce the following opinion:
‘It is said in the Shastras——’
‘Your majesty need hardly display so much erudition! Doubtless it
comes from the lips of Jayudeva or some other one of your Nine Gems
of Science, who know much more about their songs and their stanzas
than they do about their scriptures,’ insolently interrupted the
Baital, who never lost an opportunity of carping at those reverend
men.
‘It is said in the Shastras,’ continued Raja Vikram sternly, after
hesitating whether he should or should not administer a corporeal
correction to the Vampire, ‘that Mother Ganga[162] is the queen
amongst rivers, and the mountain Sumeru[163] is the monarch among
mountains, and the tree Kalpavriksha[164] is the king of all trees,
and the head of man is the best and most excellent of limbs. And
thus, according to this reason, the wife belonged to him whose
noblest position claimed her.’
[162] The ‘Ganges,’ in heaven called Mandakini. I have no idea
why we still adhere to our venerable corruption of the word.
[163] The fabulous mountain supposed by Hindu geographers to
occupy the centre of the universe.
[164] The all-bestowing tree in Indra’s Paradise, which grants
everything asked of it. It is the Tuba of El Islam, and is not
unknown to the Apocryphal New Testament.
‘The next thing your majesty will do, I suppose,’ continued the
Baital, with a sneer, ‘is to support the opinions of the Digambara,
who maintains that the soul is exceedingly rarefied, confined to
one place, and of equal dimensions with the body, or the fancies of
that worthy philosopher Jaimani, who conceiving soul and mind and
matter to be things purely synonymous, asserts outwardly and writes
in his books that the brain is the organ of the mind which is acted
upon by the immortal soul, but who inwardly and verily believes that
the brain is the mind, and consequently that the brain is the soul
or spirit or whatever you please to call it; in fact that soul is a
natural faculty of the body. A pretty doctrine, indeed, for a Brahman
to hold. You might as well agree with me at once that the soul of man
resides, when at home, either in a vein in the breast, or in the pit
of his stomach, or that half of it is in a man’s brain and the other
or reasoning half is in his heart, an organ of his body.’
‘What has all this string of words to do with the matter, Vampire?’
asked Raja Vikram, angrily.
‘Only,’ said the demon laughing, ‘that in my opinion, as opposed
to the Shastras and to Raja Vikram, that the beautiful Unmadini
belonged, not to the head part but to the body part. Because the
latter has an immortal soul in the pit of its stomach, whereas the
former is a box of bone, more or less thick, and contains brains
which are of much the same consistence as those of a calf.’
‘Villain!’ exclaimed the Raja, ‘does not the soul or conscious
life enter the body through the sagittal suture and lodge in the
brain, thence to contemplate, through the same opening, the divine
perfections?’
‘I must, however, bid you farewell for the moment, O warrior king,
Sakadhipati-Vikramaditya![165] I feel a sudden and ardent desire to
change this cramped position for one more natural to me.’
[165] ‘Vikramaditya, Lord of the Saka.’ This is _prévoyance_ on
the part of the Vampire; the king had not acquired the title.
The warrior monarch had so far committed himself that he could not
prevent the Vampire from flitting. But he lost no more time in
following him than a grain of mustard, in its fall, stays on a cow’s
horn. And when he had thrown him over his shoulder, the king desired
him of his own accord to begin a new tale.
‘O my left eyelid flutters,’ exclaimed the Baital in despair, ‘my
heart throbs, my sight is dim: surely now beginneth the end. It is as
Vidhata hath written on my forehead—how can it be otherwise?[166]
Still listen, O mighty Raja, whilst I recount to you a true story,
and Saraswati[167] sit on my tongue.’
[166] On the sixth day after the child’s birth, the god Vidhata
writes all its fate upon its forehead. The Moslems have a similar
idea, and probably it passed to the Hindus.
[167] Goddess of eloquence. ‘The waters of the Saraswati’ is the
classical Hindu phrase for the mirage.
THE VAMPIRE’S TENTH STORY.[168]
OF THE MARVELLOUS DELICACY OF THREE QUEENS.
[168] This story is perhaps the least interesting in the
collection. I have translated it literally, in order to give an
idea of the original. The reader will remark in it the source
of our own nursery tale about the princess who was so high
born and delicately bred, that she could discover the three
peas laid beneath a straw mattress and four feather beds. The
Hindus, however, believe that Sybaritism can be carried so far; I
remember my Pandit asserting the truth of the story.
The Baital said, O king, in the Gaur country, Varddhman by name,
there is a city, and one called Gunshekhar was the Raja of that land.
His minister was one Abhaichand, a Jain, by whose teachings the king
also came into the Jain faith.
The worship of Shiva and of Vishnu, gifts of cows, gifts of lands,
gifts of rice balls, gaming and spirit drinking, all these he
prohibited. In the city no man could get leave to do them, and as
for bones, into the Ganges no man was allowed to throw them, and in
these matters the minister, having taken orders from the king, caused
a proclamation to be made about the city saying, ‘Whoever these acts
shall do, the Raja having confiscated, will punish him and banish him
from the city.’
Now one day the Diwan[169] began to say to the Raja, ‘O great king,
to the decisions of the Faith be pleased to give ear. Whosoever takes
the life of another, his life also in the future birth is taken:
this very sin causes him to be born again and again upon earth and
to die. And thus he ever continues to be born and to die. Hence for
one who has found entrance into this world to cultivate religion is
right and proper. Be pleased to behold! By love, by wrath, by pain,
by desire, and by fascination overpowered, the gods Bramha, Vishnu,
and Mahadeva (Shiva) in various ways upon the earth are ever becoming
incarnate. Far better than they is the Cow, who is free from passion,
enmity, drunkenness, anger, covetousness, and inordinate affection,
who supports mankind, and whose progeny in many ways give ease and
solace to the creatures of the world. These deities and sages (munis)
believe in the Cow.[170]
[169] A minister. The word, as is the case with many in this
collection, is quite modern Moslem, and anachronistic.
[170] The cow is called the mother of the gods, and is declared
by Bramha, the first person of the triad, Vishnu and Shiva being
the second and the third, to be a proper object of worship. ‘If
a European speak to the Hindu about eating the flesh of cows,’
says an old missionary, ‘they immediately raise their hands to
their ears; yet milkmen, carmen, and farmers beat the cow as
unmercifully as a carrier of coals beats his ass in England.’
The Jains or Jainas (from ji, to conquer; as subduing the
passions) are one of the atheistical sects with whom the Brahmans
have of old carried on the fiercest religious controversies,
ending in many a sanguinary fight. Their tenets are consequently
exaggerated and ridiculed, as in the text. They believe that
there is no such God as the common notions on the subject
point out, and they hold that the highest act of virtue is to
abstain from injuring sentient creatures. Man does not possess
an immortal spirit: death is the same to Bramha and to a fly.
Therefore there is no heaven or hell separate from present
pleasure or pain. Hindu Epicureans:—‘Epicuri de grege porci.’
‘For such reason to believe in the gods is not good. Upon this earth
be pleased to believe in the Cow. It is our duty to protect the life
of everyone, beginning from the elephant, through ants, beasts, and
birds, up to man. In the world righteousness equal to that there
is none. Those who, eating the flesh of other creatures, increase
their own flesh, shall in the fulness of time assuredly obtain the
fruition of Narak;[171] hence for a man it is proper to attend to
the conservation of life. They who understand not the pain of other
creatures, and who continue to slay and to devour them, last but few
days in the land, and return to mundane existence, maimed, limping,
one-eyed, blind, dwarfed, hunchbacked, and imperfect in such wise.
Just as they consume the bodies of beasts and birds, even so they
end by spoiling their own bodies. From drinking spirits also the
great sin arises, hence the consuming of spirits and flesh is not
advisable.’
[171] Narak is one of the multitudinous places of Hindu
punishment, said to adjoin the residence of Ajarna. The less
cultivated Jains believe in a region of torment. The illuminati,
however, have a sovereign contempt for the Creator, for a future
state, and for all religious ceremonies. As Hindus, however,
they believe in future births of mankind, somewhat influenced by
present actions. The ‘next birth’ in the mouth of a Hindu, we are
told, is the same as ‘to-morrow’ in the mouth of a Christian.
The metempsychosis is on an extensive scale: according to some,
a person who loses human birth must pass through eight millions
of successive incarnations—fish, insects, worms, birds, and
beasts—before he can reappear as a man.
The minister having in this manner explained to the king the
sentiments of his own mind, so brought him over to the Jain faith,
that whatever he said, so the king did. Thus in Brahmans, in
Jogis, in Janganis, in Sevras, in Sannyasis,[172] and in religious
mendicants, no man believed, and according to this creed the rule was
carried on.
[172] Jogi, or Yogi, properly applies to followers of the Yoga
or Patanjala school, who by ascetic practices acquire power over
the elements. Vulgarly, it is a general term for mountebank
vagrants, worshippers of Shiva. The Janganis adore the same
deity, and carry about a Linga. The Sevras are Jain beggars,
who regard their chiefs as superior to the gods of other sects.
The Sannyasis are mendicant followers of Shiva; they never
touch metals or fire, and, in religious parlance, they take
up the staff. They are opposed to the Viragis, worshippers of
Vishnu, who contend as strongly against the worshippers of gods
who receive bloody offerings, as a Christian could do against
idolatry.
Now one day, being in the power of Death, Raja Gunshekhar died.
Then his son Dharmadhwaj sat upon the carpet (throne), and began to
rule. Presently he caused the minister Abhaichand to be seized, had
his head shaved all but seven locks of hair, ordered his face to be
blackened, and mounting him on an ass, with drums beaten, had him led
all about the city, and drove him from the kingdom. From that time he
carried on his rule free from all anxiety.
It so happened that in the season of spring, the king Dharmadhwaj,
taking his queens with him, went for a stroll in the garden, where
there was a large tank with lotuses blooming within it. The Raja,
admiring its beauty, took off his clothes and went down to bathe.
After plucking a flower and coming to the bank, he was going to give
it into the hands of one of his queens, when it slipped from his
fingers, fell upon her foot, and broke it with the blow. Then the
Raja being alarmed, at once came out of the tank, and began to apply
remedies to her.
Hereupon night came on, and the moon shone brightly: the falling
of its rays on the body of the second queen formed blisters. And
suddenly from a distance the sound of a wooden pestle came out of
a householder’s dwelling, when the third queen fainted away with a
severe pain in the head.
Having spoken thus much the Baital said, ‘O my king! of these three
which is the most delicate?’ The Raja answered, ‘She indeed is the
most delicate who fainted in consequence of the headache.’ The Baital
hearing this speech, went and hung himself from the very same tree,
and the Raja having gone there and taken him down and fastened him in
the bundle and placed him on his shoulder, carried him away.
THE VAMPIRE’S ELEVENTH STORY.
WHICH PUZZLES RAJA VIKRAM.
There is a queer time coming, O Raja Vikram!—a queer time coming
(said the Vampire), a queer time coming. Elderly people like you
talk abundantly about the good old days that were, and about the
degeneracy of the days that are. I wonder what you would say if you
could but look forward a few hundred years.
Brahmans shall disgrace themselves by becoming soldiers, and being
killed, and Serviles (Shudras) shall dishonour themselves by wearing
the thread of the twice-born, and by refusing to be slaves; in fact,
society shall be all ‘mouth’ and mixed castes.[173] The courts of
justice shall be disused; the great works of peace shall no longer
be undertaken; wars shall last six weeks, and their causes shall
be clean forgotten; the useful arts and great sciences shall die
starved; there shall be no Gems of Science; there shall be a
hospital for destitute kings, those, at least, who do not lose their
heads, and no Vikrama——
[173] The Brahman, or priest, is supposed to proceed from
the mouth of Bramha, the creating person of the Triad; the
Khshatriyas (soldiers) from his arms; the Vaishyas (enterers into
business) from his thighs; and the Shudras, ‘who take refuge in
the Brahmans,’ from his feet. Only high caste men should assume
the thread at the age of puberty.
A severe shaking stayed for a moment the Vampire’s tongue.
He presently resumed. Briefly, building tanks; feeding Brahmans;
lying when one ought to lie; suicide; the burning of widows, and the
burying of live children, shall become utterly unfashionable.
The consequence of this singular degeneracy, O mighty Vikram, will
be that strangers shall dwell beneath the roof tree in Bharat Khanda
(India), and impure barbarians shall call the land their own. They
come from a wonderful country, and I am most surprised that they bear
it. The sky which ought to be gold and blue is there grey, a kind of
dark white; the sun looks deadly pale, and the moon as if he were
dead.[174] The sea, when not dirty green, glistens with yellowish
foam, and as you approach the shore, tall ghastly cliffs, like the
skeletons of giants, stand up to receive or ready to repel. During
the greater part of the sun’s Dakhshanayan (southern declination) the
country is covered with a sort of cold white stuff which dazzles the
eyes; and at such times the air is obscured with what appears to be a
shower of white feathers or flocks of cotton. At other seasons there
is a pale glare produced by the mist clouds which spread themselves
over the lower firmament. Even the faces of the people are white;
the men are white when not painted blue, the women are whiter, and
the children are whitest: these indeed often have white hair.
[174] Soma, the moon, I have said, is masculine in India.
‘Truly,’ exclaimed Dharma Dhwaj, ‘says the proverb, “Whoso seeth the
world telleth many a lie.”’
At present (resumed the Vampire, not heeding the interruption),
they run about naked in the woods, being merely Hindu outcastes.
Presently they will change—the wonderful white Pariahs! They will
eat all food indifferently, domestic fowls, onions, hogs fed in the
street, donkeys, horses, hares, and (most horrible!) the flesh of
the sacred cow. They will imbibe what resembles meat of colocynth,
mixed with water, producing a curious frothy liquid, and a fiery
stuff which burns the mouth, for their milk will be mostly chalk
and pulp of brains; they will ignore the sweet juices of fruits and
sugar-cane, and as for the pure element they will drink it, but
only as medicine. They will shave their beards instead of their
heads, and stand upright when they should sit down, and squat upon a
wooden frame instead of a carpet, and appear in red and black like
the children of Yama.[175] They will never offer sacrifices to the
manes of ancestors, leaving them after their death to fry in the
hottest of places. Yet will they perpetually quarrel and fight about
their faith; for their tempers are fierce, and they would burst if
they could not harm one another. Even now the children, who amuse
themselves with making puddings on the shore, that is to say, heaping
up the sand, always end their little games with ‘punching,’ which
means shutting the hand and striking, one another’s heads, and it is
soon found that the children are the fathers of the men.
[175] Pluto.
These wonderful white outcastes will often be ruled by female chiefs,
and it is likely that the habit of prostrating themselves before a
woman who has not the power of cutting off a single head, may account
for their unusual degeneracy and uncleanness. They will consider no
occupation so noble as running after a jackal; they will dance for
themselves, holding on to strange women, and they will take a pride
in playing upon instruments, like young music girls.
The women of course, relying upon the aid of the female chieftains,
will soon emancipate themselves from the rules of modesty. They
will eat with their husbands and with other men, and yawn and sit
carelessly before them showing the backs of their heads. They will
impudently quote the words, ‘By confinement at home, even under
affectionate and observant guardians, women are not secure, but those
are really safe who are guarded by their own inclinations;’ as the
poet sang—
Woman obeys one only word, her heart.
They will not allow their husbands to have more than one wife,
and even the single wife will not be his slave when he needs her
services, busying herself in the collection of wealth, in ceremonial
purification, and feminine duty; in the preparation of daily food
and in the superintendence of household utensils. What said Rama of
Sita his wife? ‘If I chanced to be angry, she bore my impatience like
the patient earth without a murmur; in the hour of necessity she
cherished me as a mother does her child; in the moments of repose she
was a lover to me; in times of gladness she was to me as a friend.’
And it is said, ‘a religious wife assists her husband in his worship
with a spirit as devout as his own. She gives her whole mind to make
him happy; she is as faithful to him as a shadow to the body, and she
esteems him, whether poor or rich, good or bad, handsome or deformed.
In his absence or his sickness she renounces every gratification; at
his death she dies with him, and he enjoys heaven as the fruit of
her virtuous deeds. Whereas if she be guilty of many wicked actions
and he should die first, he must suffer much for the demerits of his
wife.’