In the eleventh year of the reign of Aurungzebe, Abdalla, King of the
Lesser Bucharia, a lineal descendant from the Great Zingis, having
abdicated the throne in favor of his son, set out on a pilgrimage to the
Shrine of the Prophet; and, passing into India through the delightful
valley of Cashmere, rested for a short time at Delhi on his way. He was
entertained by Aurungzebe in a style of magnificent hospitality, worthy
alike of the visitor and the host, and was afterwards escorted with the
same splendor to Surat, where he embarked for Arabia.[1] During the stay
of the Royal Pilgrim at Delhi, a marriage was agreed upon between the
Prince, his son, and the youngest daughter of the Emperor, LALLA ROOKH;
[2]--a Princess described by the poets of her time as more beautiful than
Leila,[3] Shirine,[4] Dewildé,[5] or any of those heroines whose names
and loves embellish the songs of Persia and Hindostan. It was intended
that the nuptials should be celebrated at Cashmere; where the young King,
as soon as the cares of the empire would permit, was to meet, for the
first time, his lovely bride, and, after a few months' repose in that
enchanting valley, conduct her over the snowy hills into Bucharia.
The day of LALLA ROOKH'S departure from Delhi was as splendid as sunshine
and pageantry could make it. The bazaars and baths were all covered with
the richest tapestry; hundreds of gilded barges upon the Jumna floated
with their banners shining in the water; while through the streets groups
of beautiful children went strewing the most delicious flowers around, as
in that Persian festival called the Scattering of the Roses;[6] till
every part of the city was as fragrant as if a caravan of musk from Khoten
had passed through it. The Princess, having taken leave of her kind
father, who at parting hung a cornelian of Yemen round her neck, on which
was inscribed a verse from the Koran, and having sent a considerable
present to the Fakirs, who kept up the Perpetual Lamp in her sister's
tomb, meekly ascended the palankeen prepared for her; and while Aurungzebe
stood to take a last look from his balcony, the procession moved slowly on
the road to Lahore.
Seldom had the Eastern world seen a cavalcade so superb. From the gardens
in the suburbs to the Imperial palace, it was one unbroken line of
splendor. The gallant appearance of the Rajahs and Mogul lords,
distinguished by those insignia of the Emperor's favor,[7] the feathers
of the egret of Cashmere in their turbans, and the small silver-rimm'd
kettle-drums at the bows of their saddles;--the costly armor of their
cavaliers, who vied, on this occasion, with the guards of the great Keder
Khan,[8] in the brightness of their silver battle-axes and the massiness
of their maces of gold;--the glittering of the gilt pine-apple[9] on the
tops of the palankeens;--the embroidered trappings of the elephants,
bearing on their backs small turrets, in the shape of little antique
temples, within which the Ladies of LALLA ROOKH lay as it were enshrined;
--the rose-colored veils of the Princess's own sumptuous litter,[10] at
the front of which a fair young female slave sat fanning her through the
curtains, with feathers of the Argus pheasant's wing;[11]--and the lovely
troop of Tartarian and Cashmerian maids of honor, whom the young King had
sent to accompany his bride, and who rode on each side of the litter, upon
small Arabian horses;--all was brilliant, tasteful, and magnificent, and
pleased even the critical and fastidious FADLADEEN, Great Nazir or
Chamberlain of the Haram, who was borne in his palankeen immediately after
the Princess, and considered himself not the least important personage of
the pageant.
FADLADEEN was a judge of everything,--from the pencilling of a
Circassian's eyelids to the deepest questions of science and literature;
from the mixture of a conserve of rose-leaves to the composition of an
epic poem: and such influence had his opinion upon the various tastes of
the day, that all the cooks and poets of Delhi stood in awe of him. His
political conduct and opinions were founded upon that line of Sadi,--
"Should the Prince at noon-day say, It is night, declare that you behold
the moon and stars."--And his zeal for religion, of which Aurungzebe was a
munificent protector,[12] was about as disinterested as that of the
goldsmith who fell in love with the diamond eyes of the idol of
Jaghernaut.[13]
During the first days of their journey, LALLA ROOKH, who had passed all
her life within the shadow of the Royal Gardens of Delhi,[14] found
enough in the beauty of the scenery through which they passed to interest
her mind, and delight her imagination; and when at evening or in the heat
of the day they turned off from the high road to those retired and
romantic places which had been selected for her encampments,--sometimes,
on the banks of a small rivulet, as clear as the waters of the Lake of
Pearl;[15] sometimes under the sacred shade of a Banyan tree, from which
the view opened upon a glade covered with antelopes; and often in those
hidden, embowered spots, described by one from the Isles of the West,
[16]as "places of melancholy, delight, and safety, where all the company
around was wild peacocks and turtle-doves;"--she felt a charm in these
scenes, so lovely and so new to her, which, for a time, made her
indifferent to every other amusement. But LALLA ROOKH was young, and the
young love variety; nor could the conversation of her Ladies and the Great
Chamberlain, FADLADEEN,(the only persons, of course, admitted to her
pavilion.) sufficiently enliven those many vacant hours, which were
devoted neither to the pillow nor the palankeen. There was a little
Persian slave who sung sweetly to the Vina, and who, now and then, lulled
the Princess to sleep with the ancient ditties of her country, about the
loves of Wavnak and Ezra,[17] the fair-haired Zal and his mistress
Rodahver,[18] not forgetting the combat of Rustam with the terrible White
Demon.[19] At other times she was amused by those graceful dancing-girls
of Delhi, who had been permitted by the Bramins of the Great Pagoda to
attend her, much to the horror of the good Mussulman FADLADEEN, who could
see nothing graceful or agreeable in idolaters, and to whom the very
tinkling of their golden anklets[20] was an abomination.
But these and many other diversions were repeated till they lost all their
charm, and the nights and noon-days were beginning to move heavily, when,
at length, it was recollected that, among the attendants sent by the
bridegroom, was a young poet of Cashmere, much celebrated throughout the
Valley for his manner of reciting the Stories of the East, on whom his
Royal Master had conferred the privilege of being admitted to the pavilion
of the Princess, that he might help to beguile the tediousness of the
journey by some of his most agreeable recitals. At the mention of a poet,
FADLADEEN elevated his critical eyebrows, and, having refreshed his
faculties with a dose of that delicious opium which is distilled from the
black poppy of the Thebais, gave orders for the minstrel to be forthwith
introduced into the presence.
The Princess, who had once in her life seen a poet from behind the screens
of gauze in her father's hall, and had conceived from that specimen no
very favorable ideas of the Caste, expected but little in this new
exhibition to interest her;--she felt inclined, however, to alter her
opinion on the very first appearance of FERAMORZ. He was a youth about
LALLA ROOKH'S own age, and graceful as that idol of women,
Crishna,[21]--such as he appears to their young imaginations, heroic,
beautiful, breathing music from his very eyes, and exalting the religion
of his worshippers into love. His dress was simple, yet not without some
marks of costliness; and the Ladies of the Princess were not long in
discovering that the cloth, which encircled his high Tartarian cap, was of
the most delicate kind that the shawl-goats of Tibet supply.[22] Here and
there, too, over his vest, which was confined by a flowered girdle of
Kashan, hung strings of fine pearl, disposed with an air of studied
negligence;--nor did the exquisite embroidery of his sandals escape the
observation of these fair critics; who, however they might give way to
FADLADEEN upon the unimportant topics of religion and government, had the
spirit of martyrs in everything relating to such momentous matters as
jewels and embroidery.
For the purpose of relieving the pauses of recitation by music, the young
Cashmerian held in his hand a kitar;--such as, in old times, the Arab
maids of the West used to listen to by moonlight in the gardens of the
Alhambra--and, having premised, with much humility, that the story he was
about to relate was founded on the adventures of that Veiled Prophet of
Khorassan,[23] who, in the year of the Hegira 163, created such alarm
throughout the Eastern Empire, made an obeisance to the Princess, and thus
began:--