The Island of Pearls, shaped like a dewdrop hanging from the lotus petal
of India, is loveliest of the Oceanides, a Nereid floating on blue
tropic seas. She is a voluptuous beauty, jewelled, languid, fanned by
spiced airs, crowned with flowers, dusky, sultry, with strange romances
in her past as she went from lover to lover, faithful only to one, the
eternal sea. Colombo flames on you in the sun, hidden in trees so deep,
so green that if you climb a hill the town is lost like a bird’s nest in
the tangle of vegetation. And what trees!—unlike the pensive elm and
poplar, the ribbed oak of the West, these burst into flowers and a
spendthrift fire of life. There is a giant covered with clusters of
mauve blossoms like the rhododendron—I could not leave it—I was caught
like a bee by its huge glory towering up into the sunshine. It bathed
every sense in delight to stand beneath and see the larkspur blue of the
sky through the crowded bloom. Others more austerely beautiful with
faint rose and white crocus flowers springing from the grey stem and
loading the air with perfume, and for the background the grace and
grandeur of the palms balancing their frondure in the blue. There are no
words to describe these things. Only in colour or music can their
splendour be told.
And the lavish fruit! Mangosteens, mangoes, papayas, oranges,—Aladdin’s
jewels of wizard gardens. And the jewels themselves, for Ratnapura, the
City of Gems, is near at hand. Moonstones heaped in great pearl-shells,
like silvery blue moonlight touched with swimming gleams of gold, great
cats’ eyes with oblique pupils, aqua-marines of purest sparkling green,
sea water dipped up from the secrecies of deepest depths, wine-dark
jargoons, tourmalines many-hued as spring flowers, sapphires ranging
from pale azure to ocean blue, carbuncles that flame in ancient legends
as sacred jewels, all these and many more Ceylon displays like the Queen
she is. And the sea is as the jewels—all light and glitter and the
broken glories of rolling surf. It is these things which have made her
the desire of men’s eyes from time immemorial—the Island of the blue
horizon, scarcely believable for beauty and wonder. Hear Abdulla, called
Wassaf, the poet of Siraf in Persia, when he wrote of her long centuries
ago:
“When Adam was driven forth from Paradise God made a mountain of Ceylon
the place of his descent, to break the force of change and so assuage
his fall. The charms of this fair country, the softness of the air, are
beyond all telling. White amber is the dregs of its sea, and its indigo
and red bakam are cosmetics for beauty. The leaves, the barks, and the
sweating of its trees are cloves, spikenard, aloe wood, camphor and
fragrant mandel. Its icy water is a ball of muneya for the fractures of
the world. The boundaries of its fields refresh the heart like the
influence of the stars. The margins of its regions are the bedfellows of
loveliness. Its myrobalums impart the blackness of youthful hair, and
its peppercorns put the mole on the face of beauty on the fire of envy.
Its rubies and carnelians are like the lips and cheeks of charming
girls, and its treasures are as oceans full of polished gems. Indeed the
various birds are sweet singing parrots and the pheasants of its gardens
are graceful peacocks.”
So they told of her, and merchants came from the end of the earth to
trade in the wonders of Serendib, bringing and taking riches, and not
only riches but tales of wildest wonder and romance. They said the
people were descended from a royal lion and hence their name
Singhalese—Singha, a lion. They said she breathed her sweetness for
miles out to sea and that before the shore rose from the horizon the air
was languid with her spices and perfumes. Was this true or hyperbole? It
is at least certain that in many parts of the island the wild lemon
grass is almost overwhelming in its odour and many of the flowers scent
all the world about them. The tropical sun and hot dewy moisture
stimulate plant life into a passionate luxuriance of fragrant beauty.
Horror too, for there are blossoms whose name of Stercula foetida tells
all that need be told of their loathsomeness.
In this strange land the sands of some of the rivers are minute rubies
and garnets, and it is of Serendib the story was told of serpents that
guarded the precious jacinths, and the stratagem of the merchants in
flinging pieces of meat into deep valleys where they lay, that hovering
eagles might strike their talons in the meat encrusted with jewels and
carry it to their nests in the rocks, where ready hands could seize it.
The jacinths have become diamonds in the Arabian Nights, but we all know
the story in the mouth of Sindbad the sailor of perilous seas.
And the merchants had terrible tales to tell of the women of the island.
They were sirens as dangerous as ever sought to beguile Ulysses. Some of
them dwelt in a great city of iron on the coast with fluttering signals
on their towers to lure sea-farers, and when the eager boats made for
the shore women of the most alluring loveliness, perfumed and garlanded,
ran to meet them, stretching passionate arms, wooing them to enter the
city. There they caressed them until every sense was drowned in delight,
when bound and helpless, they flung them into iron cages and devoured
them one by one.
The merchants were the great romancers of the ancient world—the singers
of songs, the tellers of tales, and surely they had the right, for is
there more romance in any word than in their own name? It calls up
mirage after mirage of wearied camel caravans toiling through deserts of
sand to cities that were old when Balkh and Damascus were young; where
the blue and glittering domes of porcelain rise against intenser skies
in sunsets sonorous as a gong with deep light and colour. It is the
merchants always who carry romance and adventure in their corded bales.
In robe and turban they yearn for the caravanserais and the men coming
by many ways to the meeting place. They hunger for the flat hot cakes
seed-sprinkled, and the savoury smells of the kous-kous bubbling in oil,
but most of all for the excitements and lusts of the bazaar and the
dangerous winding ways of forbidden palaces. See them unroll the gold
and flowered stuffs of Bokhara, the silks from Cos as transparent as
running water that gave the fair Pamphila the glory of having invented a
dress “in which women were naked though clothed.” See the muslins of
Dacca unloosed from the swaying camel-packs;—the merchants can scarcely
handle them lest a faint breeze blow them from their hold, for of these
it is told that the Emperor, Akbar, the Truth-Seeker, rebuked a woman
who appeared before him robed in woven air, saying, “Little does it
become a daughter of the Prophet to show herself arrayed in one dress
only and that, as it were, nothing, being but the illusion of a
garment.” And she replied audaciously: “Majesty, Light of the Age, I am
more modest than modesty’s self, for I wear at this moment _Nine_.”
Through all the stories of Ceylon the merchants go, tempting the
perilous seas in frail dromonds and crank high-decked galleons, tempted
in turn by princesses, more perilous than the seas, shooting dangerous
glances through rose-coloured veils. Sometimes their historic quests
were wild as any dream. It was rumoured over Asia that the lost Tree of
Life grew in the jungles of this fortunate Island and a King of Persia
and Emperor of China sent their merchants with huge wealth to buy its
precious leaves—more than ever precious in the intrigues of Oriental
Courts—but only to find it grows in a Paradise more far away than even
the famed Serendib, and that no merchants, young and ardent, grave and
bearded, could lay that merchandise before the throne.
Ceylon figures in one of the most ancient epics of the world—the
Ramayana, for it was Ravana the demon King of Ceylon (Lanka) who seized
the lovely Sita, wife of the God-King Rama as she wandered in the
forest, and bore her through the air to his island kingdom. The writer
of the poem was a mighty poem maker: Valmiki,—let his name be fragrant
for all time! And like all his divine brotherhood he was first taught by
sorrow. For sitting one day in the heart of the woods, Valmiki beheld
two herons singing for joy and love as they wandered together by air and
water, and as he gladdened to their gladness, an archer shot the male
bird and he fell bathed in blood, never again to sweep the wing-ways of
the sky, and his mate fluttered about him in agony. So Valmiki, with the
wrath and power of a poet, cursed the man who had done this black deed,
and, as he spoke, suddenly he knew that his words were a measured music
and that a new and wonderful thing had befallen in the world. And so it
was, for Brahma appeared in the cloud, four-faced, majestic, and
commanded him to write the history of Rama and the storming of Ceylon in
this same mysterious music. “And it shall be true in every word,” said
the God, “and so long as the world lasts shall this story be known among
men.” And that was the beginning of poetry in India.
Perhaps this is the chief fame of Ceylon, for the God spoke not in vain.
There is no city now so lovely as that of which Valmiki tells—the city
of jewelled pavements and windows of glimmering crystal and the cloudy
palaces where the cruel King dwelt and where Sita was a captive.
For—“Here dwelt the fair princesses torn by him from vanquished Kings.
Now it was night and they lay overpowered with wine and sleep. One had
her head thrown backward; some had their garlands crushed; some lay in
each other’s bosoms, or with arms interlaced, others in slumber deep as
death. The King Ravana lay on a dais apart made of crystal and adorned
with jewels. Here lay he overcome with wine, with glittering rings in
his ears and robed in gold, breathing like a hissing serpent. Around him
lay his sleeping Queens, and nearest him the dearest, the golden-hued
Mandodari.”
So the story runs through all its epic wonder of love and war, and
yearly in India is celebrated the harrying of Ravana—I have seen his
ten-headed image go up in flames amid the rejoicing of a multitude. Yet,
as I think, the ancient city, Anaradhapura, now a ruin in the jungle,
could not have fallen so far behind the splendours of Valmiki. Many who
have visited it have written of it as it is in death—the broken
fragments of palaces and temples, a few preserved here and there like
rocks that are the survival of some lost Atlantis in the drowning ocean
of the forest. How few recall it as it was in its pride and power! I
stood in the green dimness of the glades where are the sculptured tanks
where the queens bathed in days long dead, and read the words of one who
knew it well—Fa Hien, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim of the fourth
century A. D. For this was the Anaradhapura of the Ceylon he visited in
search of the words of the Lord Buddha; of himself he speaks in the
third person:
“To the north of the royal city is erected a great tower in height 470
feet,—it is adorned with gold and silver and perfected with every
precious substance. There is by the side of it a monastery containing
5000 priests. They also have built here a hall of the Lord which is
covered with gold and silver engraved work. In the midst of this hall is
a jasper figure (of the Buddha) in height about 22 feet. The entire body
glitters and sparkles with the seven precious substances. In the right
hand he holds a pearl of inestimable value. Fa Hien had been absent many
years from China; the manners and customs of these people were entirely
strange to him, moreover his fellow travellers were now separated from
him, for some had remained behind and some were dead. All at once as he
stood by this jasper figure, he beheld a merchant present to it as a
religious offering a fan of white silk of Chinese manufacture.
Unwittingly Fa Hien gave way to his sorrowful feelings and the tears
flowed from his eyes.”
Those tears, dried so long since, gave to this Western pilgrim, standing
in the same place, the true Virgilian sense of tears in mortal things,
and still they move the world.
Ceylon is a land of the Gods. They have left their footprints very plain
upon this radiant loveliness as they came and went. She has known many
generations of them. All who would understand her should read Valmiki’s
semi-divine poem of the great battles of Rama, God-King of India, as he
fought here his wars of the Gods and Titans to rescue his wife, the
lovely Sita, the heart’s love and worship to this day of his dominion.
Here, when the Demon King held her in captivity, the army of Rama strode
across the bridge of scattered rocks between Ceylon and India. Still may
be seen the gap that no strength, human or divine, could pass, where the
mighty host was stayed, until a little tree squirrel, for love of Rama,
laid his small body in the hollow, and because love is the bridge
eternal between the two worlds, the rescuing host passed triumphant over
it. But Rama, stooping from his Godhead, Incarnation as he was in human
flesh of Vishnu the Preserver, lifted the crushed body tenderly and
touched the dead fur, and to this day, the tree squirrels bear the marks
of the divine fingers upon their coats of grey.
There is no demarcation in Asia between the so-called animal and human
lives. Rama himself had passed through the animal experience on the
upward way and knew well what beats in the little heart beneath fur and
feather.
In those wonderful parables, the Birth Stories of the Lord Buddha, are
recorded his supposed memories of the incarnations of bird, animal and
other lives through which a steadfast evolution led him to the Ten
Perfections. How should he not know, and knowing love? Is it not written
by a great Buddhist saint: “It may well be that to the eye of flesh,
plants and trees appear to be gross matter; but to the eye of the Buddha
they are composed of minute spiritual particles; grass, trees, countries
the earth itself, shall enter wholly into Buddhahood”? And does not
science, faltering far behind the wisdom of the mighty, adumbrate these
truths in its later revelations?
We know too little of the wisdom of the East. The Magi still journey to
Bethlehem, but only those who have the heart of the Child may receive
their gold, myrrh, and frankincense.
Yet, for mere beauty’s sake, these stories of the East should be read.
Men thrill to the mighty thunder-roll of Homer’s verse, but the two
supreme epics of India are little known. If the West would gather about
the story-teller as the East gathers, in bazaar or temple court, the
stories should be told from these and other sources, until Rama stands
beside the knightly Hector, and Sita’s star is set in the same heaven
where shines the lonely splendour of Antigone.
When the rapturous peace of the Lord Buddha could no longer be contained
within the heart of India, it overflowed, and like a rising tide
submerged Ceylon. And now, although India has forgotten and has returned
to the more ancient faiths, Ceylon remembers. The Lotus of the Good Law
blossoms in every forest pool. The invocation to the Jewel in the Lotus
is daily heard from every monastery of the Faith, where the yellow-robed
Brethren still follow the way marked for them by the Blessed One who in
Uruvela attained to that supernal enlightenment of which he said, “And
that deep knowledge have I made my own—that knowledge, hard to
perceive, hard to understand, peace-giving, not to be gained by mere
reason, which is deeper than the depths, and accessible only to the
wise.
“Yet, among living men are some whose eyes are but a little darkened
with dust. To them shall the truth be manifest.”
If it be an aim of travel to see what is beautiful and strange, it may
be also an aim to seek that spiritual beauty where it sits enthroned in
its own high places; and my hope in Ceylon was to visit the land where
that strait and narrow way of Buddhism is held which is known as the
Hinayana—or the Lesser Vehicle. In Tibet, China, and Japan, I had known
the efflorescence of the Buddhist Faith where, recognizing the mystic
emanations of the Buddhas, it becomes the Greater Vehicle and breaks
into gorgeous ritual and symbolism, extraordinarily beautiful in
themselves, and yet more so in their teaching. Buddhism, in those
countries, like the Bride of the Canticles, goes beautifully in jewels
of gold and raiment of fine needlework, within her ivory palaces. In
Ceylon, like the Lady Poverty of Saint Francis of Assisi, she walks with
bared feet, bowed head, her begging-bowl in hand, simple and austere in
the yellow robe of the Master—her rock-temples and shrines as he
himself might have blessed them in their stern humility. Save at the
Temple of the Tooth, the splendours she heaps upon his altars are those
of her flowers. With these she may be lavish because his life was
wreathed with their beauty. He was born in a garden, beneath a Tree he
attained Wisdom, in a garden he died. A faith that is held by nearly
every tenth living man or woman is surely worthy of reverence and study,
even in these hurrying days when gold, not wisdom, is the measure of
attainment.
So I came to Ceylon for the first time but not for the last.
* * * * *
Near a little town in the hills stands a Wihara—a monastery—dreaming
in the silent sunshine. The palms are grouped close about the simple
roofs—so close that the passing tourist could never guess that the Head
of the Buddhist Faith in Ceylon, a great saint, a great ruler of seven
thousand priests, dwelt there in so secret, so complete an austerity.
He was a very old man when I came, but his ninety-two years sat lightly
on him and each year had laid its tribute of love and honour at his
feet. He was known as the Maha Nayaka Thero; and in religion, for the
love of the Master, he had taken the Master’s human name of Siddartha.
It was strange indeed to see the simplicity of his surroundings;—to me
it appeared singularly beautiful: it breathed the spiritual purity that
had made him beloved throughout the island.
A great scholar, deeply learned in Sanskrit and Pali and in the abtruse
philosophy that is for the elders of the Law, he was yet the gentlest of
men, and his very learning and strength were all fused into a benignant
radiance that sunned the griefs of the world he had cast so far behind
him.
I was glad to wander about in the quiet monastery—the little
one-storied quadrangle on the side of the hill. It offered—it
invited—the life of meditation, of clear thought, of delicate
austerity. The noise of great events (so-called) was like the dim murmur
of a shell when they reached the Wihara and the ear of Sri Siddartha.
But he heard, he noted the progress of science, even to the
possibilities of aviation, because to a Buddhist saint all spheres of
knowledge are one, and all nothing, in the Ocean of Omniscience.
So the people brought their grievances and troubles to the aged
Archbishop. You were in the presence of a very great gentleman when you
entered and found him seated, his scribe cross-legged at his feet to
record what passed. The people would approach him softly and with the
deepest reverence, and with permission would seat themselves on the
ground at a due distance.
“Venerable Sir, we are in trouble. We seek your counsel.” That was the
cry. And always, in spite of his many years, he listened and counselled
and comforted.
Soon after my arrival his birthday was celebrated with much rejoicing.
The Bhikkus (monks) had put up little festive bamboo arches, fluttering
with split palm-leaves like ribbons, all about the Wihara, and troops of
Bhikkus came to lay their homage at his feet. The roads were sunshiny
with their yellow robes as they flocked in from remote places—jungle,
cave-temples, and far mountains. The laity came also, crowding to see
the Venerable One. He received them all with serene joy, and pursued his
quiet way, thinking, reading, meditating on the Three Jewels—the Lord,
the Law, and the Communion of Saints. And the Bhikkus departed,
believing that he might be among them for many days.
But it was not to be; for, a few days later, while he was sweeping the
garden walks, a duty he had made his own, he felt a sudden loss of
strength, and lying down, in two hours he passed painlessly away.
I was permitted to visit Sri Siddartha as he lay in death. The room was
very simple and bare. Many of his Bhikkus stood about him, and there
were flowers, flowers, everywhere. Beside him burned a perfumed gum,
sending up its thin blue spirals of fragrance.
I was received with perfect kindness, and especially by his favourite
disciple and pupil—a young monk with a worn ascetic face, who stood in
deep meditation at the head of his Master. He looked up and smiled, and
raised the face-cloth that I might see, and looked down again at the
brown face, calm as a mask of Wisdom with its closed lips and eyes. Even
closed, they looked old—old. A Bhikku, standing by, told me that all
had loved him and were bereaved in his going. “But for him—he is in the
Nirvana of Paradise.”
The strange phrase awoke in my mind the words of the Blessed One, and I
repeated them as I stood beside that quiet sleep.
“But this, O Bhikkus, is the highest, this is the holiest wisdom—to
know that all suffering has vanished away. He has found the true
deliverance that lies beyond the reach of change.”
And I remembered the symbolic fresco in Colombo, representing the Lord
Buddha borne dead on a chariot in a garden. The gardener digs his grave,
but the Lord awakes from death, and bids the man know he is not dead but
living. The Buddha stands majestic by the open grave—the gardener
recoils in fear. Death has no more dominion.
So I left Sri Siddartha lying in the mystery where all the wisdoms are
one.
In the garden, in the riot of tropical blossom and beauty, a Bhikku was
standing in the perfect stillness that is a part of the discipline. He
greeted me, and we spoke of my quest.
“Go,” he said, “to Mihintale, where the Law first came to this island by
the hands of Mahinda. Seek also the great Dagoba where stand the images
of the Buddhas that have been and of Him who is to come. And under the
Tree which is a part of that Tree beneath which the Blessed One received
illumination, meditate on Truth.”
I delayed only that I might see the flames receive the discarded body of
the Venerable One; and the ceremony took place next day, amid a vast
gathering of the people and the great companies of the Bhikkus. They
flooded the ways with sunshine in every shade of yellow, from deep
primrose to a tawny orange. The roads were strewn, with rice like
snowflakes, stamped into star-shapes. A strange melancholy music went
with us. So, climbing a steep hill, we came to the pyre, heaped with the
scented and aromatic woods of the jungle, and closed from human view by
a high scaffolding draped with bright colours. On this pyre he was laid,
and one of his own blood, holding a torch, applied the pure element to
the wood: and, as he did so, the assembly raised a cry of “Sadhu,
Sadhu!” and with that ascription of holiness a sheet of flame swept up
into the crowns of the palms, and the scent of spices filled the air.
And even as the body of the Blessed One passed into grey ash, passed
also the worn-out dwelling of Sri Siddartha.
I made my way next day to a temple hollowed in the rock, the ceiling of
which is frescoed with gods and heroes. It is taught that here the Canon
of the Buddhist Scriptures was first committed to writing about 450 B.C.
Here five hundred, priests, learned in the Faith, assembled, and
collating the Scriptures, chanted every word, while the scribes recorded
them with stylus and palm-leaf as they heard. Burmese, Tibetans,
Indians, all were present, that so the Law might be carried over Asia,
and the Peace of the Blessed One be made known to men.
Here, too, the discipline was fixed. The Bhikku must not be touched by a
woman’s hand. He must eat but twice a day, and not after noon. He must
keep the rule of the Lady Poverty as did Saint Francis. He must sleep
nowhere but in Wiharas and other appointed places. And these are but a
few of the commands. Yet, if the rule is too hard for him, the Bhikku
may relinquish it at his will, and return to the world a free man—a
fettered man, as the Master would have said, but free according to the
rule of the Transient World. It is said that few accept this permission.
It took little imagination to people the silent temple with the
Assembly—the keen intellectual Indian faces, the yellow robe and the
bared shoulder, seated in close ranks in the twilight of the temple. Now
it was silent and empty, but a mysterious aura filled it. The buildings
of men’s hands pass away, but the rock, worn not at all, save where feet
come and go, preserves the aspect of its great day, when it was the
fountain-head of Truth.
A solemn gladness filled the air. Surely the West is waking to the
message of the East—that message, flowing through the marvellous art of
China and Japan, through the deep philosophies of India, the great
Scriptures of the Buddhist Faith, and many more such channels. And we
who have entered the many mansions through another gate may share and
rejoice in the truths that are a world-heritage.
It was time now that I should visit the holy places, and I took the road
through the jungle, intending to stay at the little rest-houses which
exist to shelter travellers. The way is green with grass in the middle;
there are two tracks for wheels—narrow and little used. Even the native
huts may sometimes be forty miles apart. And on either side runs the
huge wall of the jungle, holding its secret well.
Great trees, knotted with vines and dark with heavy undergrowth, shut me
in. Sometimes a troop of silver-grey monkeys swept chattering overhead;
sometimes a few red deer would cross the road, or a blue shrike flutter
radiantly from one shelter to another. Mostly, the jungle was silent as
the grave, but living, breathing, a vast and terrible personality; an
ocean, and with the same illimitable might and majesty. Travelling
through it, I was as a fish that swims through the green depths of
water.
So I journeyed in a little bullock cart—and suddenly, abruptly, as if
dropped from heaven, sprang out of the ocean of the jungle that bathed
its feet a huge cube of rock nearly five hundred feet high, with lesser
rocks spilt about it that would have been gigantic were it not for the
first—the famous Sigurya.
An ancient people, led by a parricide king, took this strange place and
made of it a mighty fortress. They cut galleries in the living rock
that, like ants, they might pass up and down unharmed from below; and on
the head of the rock—a space four acres in extent—they set a king’s
palace and pleasance, with a bathing-tank to cool the torrid air. Then,
still desiring beauty, this people frescoed the sheer planes of this
precipitous rock of Sigurya with pictures that modern Singhalese art
cannot rival. These vast pictures represent a procession of ladies to a
shrine, with attendants bearing offerings. Only from the waist upward
are the figures visible; they rise from clouds as if floating in the
sky. The faces have an archaic beauty and dignity. One, a queen, crowned
and bare-bosomed, followed by attendants bearing stiff lotus blooms, is
beautiful indeed, but in no Singhalese or Indian fashion—a face dark,
exotic, and heavy-lidded, like a pale orchid. It is believed the whole
rock was thus frescoed into a picture-gallery, but time and weather have
taken toll of the rest.
The Government has put steps and climbing rails, that the height may be
reached. Half-way up is a natural level, and above it soars the
remainder of the citadel, to be climbed only by notches cut in the rock,
and hand-rails as a safeguard from the sheer fall below. And here this
dead people had done a wonderful thing. They had built a lion of brick,
so colossal that the head towered to the full height of the ascent. It
has fallen into ruin, but the great cat-paws that remain indicate a
beast some two hundred feet high. There is a gate between the paws, and
in the old days they clambered up through the body of the lion and
finally through his throat, into the daylight of the top. Only the paws
are left, complete even to the little cat-claw at the back of each.
Surely one of the strangest approaches in the world! Here and there the
shelving of the rock overhangs the ascent, and drops of water fall in a
bright crystal rain perpetually over the jungle so far below.
Standing upon the height, it was weirdly lovely to see the eternal
jungle monotonously swaying and waving beneath. I thought of the strange
feet that had followed these ways, with hopes and fears so like our own.
And now their fortress is but a sunny day’s amusement for travellers
from lands unknown, and the city sitteth desolate, and the strength of
their building is resumed into the heart of nature. But the places where
men have worshipped and lifted their hands to the Infinite are never
dead. The Spirit that is Life Eternal hovers about them, and the green
that binds their broken pillars is the green of an immortal hope.
The evening was now at hand, and, after the sun-steeped day, the jungle
gave out its good smells, beautiful earth-warm smells like a
Nature-Goddess, rising from the vast tangle of life in the mysterious
depths. You may gather the flowers on their edge and wonder what the
inmost flowers are like that you will never see—rich, labyrinthine,
beyond all thought to paint.
The jungle is terrible as an army with banners. Sleeping in the little
rest-house when the night has fallen, it comes close up to you,
creeping, leaning over you, calling, whispering, vibrating with secret
life. A word more,—only one,—a movement, and you would know the
meaning and be gathered into the heart of it; but always there is
something fine, impalpable, between, and you catch but a breath of the
whisper.
Very wonderful is the jungle! In the moonlight of a small clearing I saw
the huge bulk of three wild elephants feeding. They vanished like
wraiths into the depths. The fireflies were hosting in the air like
flitting diamonds. Stealthy life and movement were about me: the jungle,
wide-awake and aware, moving on its own occasions.
A few days later I was at Anaradhapura. Once a million people dwelt in
the teeming city. Here or near was the site visited by the famous
Chinese pilgrim already mentioned, Fa Hien. But it is in ruins; the
jasper image is gone. The tower is in the dust. A few priests watch by
the scene of so much dead greatness and receive the pilgrims who still
come with bowed heads to the Holy Places. But Fa Hien has reached the
home of all the pilgrimages—the City of God dear and desirable in the
sight of Plato and Saint Augustine, and all the warriors of all the
faiths, and the inexorable years that have devoured the splendours of
the Kings leave untouched his tears and his hope, for both are rooted in
immortality.
He writes:
“The houses of the merchants are very beautifully adorned. The streets
are smooth and level. At this time the King, being an earnest believer
in the Law, desired to build a new monastery for this congregation. He
chose a pair of strong oxen and adorned their horns with gold, silver
and precious things. Then providing himself with a beautiful gilded
plough, the King himself ploughed round the four sides of the allotted
space, after which, ceding all personal rights, he presented the whole
to the priests.”
This must be the monastery described by a later pilgrim, Hieuen Tsang,
who journeyed from China to India about the year 630 A.D. In visiting
Ceylon, he writes of its magnificence and especially of an upright pole
on the roof “on which is fixed a mighty ruby. This gem constantly sheds
a brilliant light which is visible day and night for a long distance and
afar off appears like a bright star.”
That too is quenched in the dust. Where do the great jewels of antiquity
hide? But one is left at Anaradhapura more precious than rubies—the
famous image of the Buddha seated alone in a forest glade, the true
presentment of a God, to whom beneath his closed eyes eternity is
visible and time the shadow of a dream. Around him surged once the
clamour of a great city, around him now the growth of the forest, both
to his vision alike—and nothing. Some wayfarer had laid a flower at his
feet when I stood there, and a white tassel of the areca palm. The sun
and moon circle before him in this lonely place and the centuries pass
like seasons.
“Forgetful is green earth; the God alone
Remember everlastingly.”
The place is a village lost in the woods, but inexpressibly holy because
it contains in its own temple the sacred Bodhi Tree which is an offshoot
of that very Tree beneath which the Lord Buddha received the Perfect
Wisdom. Ceylon desired this treasure, and they tried to break a branch
from the Tree, but dared not, for it resisted the sacrilege. But the
Princess Sanghamitta, in great awe and with trembling hand, drew a line
of vermilion about the bough, and at that line it separated from the
Tree, and the Princess planted it in perfumed earth in a golden vase,
and so brought it, attended by honours human and superhuman, to
Ceylon—to this place, where it still stands. It is believed to be 2230
years old.
With infinite reverence I was given two leaves, collected as they fell;
and it is difficult to look on them unmoved if indeed this Tree be
directly descended from the other, which sheltered the triumphant
conflict with evil.
The city itself is drowned in the jungle. In the green twilight you meet
a queen’s palace, with reeling pillars and fallen capitals, beautiful
with carved moonstones, for so are called the steps of ascent. Or lost
in tangle, a manger fifty feet long for the royal elephants, or a nobly
planned bath for the queens, where it is but to close the eyes and dream
that dead loveliness floating in the waters once so jealously guarded,
now mirroring the wild woodways. A little creeper is stronger than all
our strength, and our armies are as nothing before the silent legions of
the grass.
Later, I stood before the image of that Buddha who is to come—who in
the Unchanging awaits his hour; Maitreya, the Buddha of Love. A majestic
figure, robed like a king, for he will be royal. In his face, calm as
the Sphinx, must the world decipher its hope, if it may. Strangely
enough, in most of his images this Saviour who shall come is seated like
a man of the West, and many learned in the faith believe that this
Morning Star shall rise in the West. May he come quickly!
I set out one day for Mihintale, in a world of dewy, virginal
loveliness, washed with morning gold, the sun shooting bright arrows
into the green shade of the trees, a cloud of butterflies radiant as
little flower angels going with me. One splendour, rose-red,
velvet-black, alighted with quivering wings on the mouse-grey shoulder
of the meek little bull who drew my cart and so went with us.
I was glad that my companion should be a devout Buddhist, for his
reverence and delight in the beauty of his faith taught me many things.
We climbed up through trees so still that the rustling of their shadows
on the ground might have been audible, and as we went he told me a very
ancient Buddhist story which must have reached the Island with the
Apostle Mahinda, son of the high Emperor Ashoka, who brought the faith
from his father’s court in India. Ashoka is one of the great
world-rulers, the Constantine of the Buddhist teaching and himself a
devout disciple. This story is a Jataka or Birth Story of the Lord, one
of those to which I have already alluded, as conveying moral teaching
(and often much folk lore), and this is called “The Dancing Peacock.”
“Thus have I heard. In the old days the Blessed Buddha sat at Jetavana,
and they told him of a monk who had become drowned in luxury, eating,
drinking and adorning his person with magnificence, so that he cared
nothing for the faith. And at last they brought him before the Lord that
he might be admonished. And the Perfect One said:
“‘Is it true, monk, that despising all nobility you have surrendered
yourself to idle luxury?’
“And without waiting to hear a word more the monk flew into a violent
anger, and tearing off his magnificent robe he stood naked before the
Master, crying:
“‘Then, if you like not my robes, this is the way I will go about!’
“So the bystanding monks cried out: ‘Shame, Shame!’ and in a fury he
rushed from the hall and returned to the condition of a layman. And the
Lord said:
“‘Not only now, O monks, has this man lost the Jewel of the faith by
immodesty but it was also with him in a former life. Hear the story of
the Dancing Peacock.
“‘Very long ago in the first age of the world, the birds chose the
Golden Bird to be their King. Now the Golden Bird had a daughter, most
beautiful to see, and he gave her her choice of a husband, after the
ancient manner of India, calling together all the birds of the Himalaya.
And he sent for his daughter, saying: “Now come and choose!” And looking
she saw the Peacock with a neck of gold and emeralds and a train of
spread jewels, and instantly she said: “Let this be my husband!”
“So all the birds approached the Peacock, saying:
“‘Noble Peacock, the Princess has set her heart upon you. Therefore
rejoice with humility.’
“But the Peacock, walking arrogantly, replied:
“‘Up to this day none of you would recognize the greatness that was in
me. Now instantly do homage to my majesty!’
“And so intoxicated was he with pride that he began to dance, spreading
his wings and swaying his head, and altogether conducting himself like a
drunken man who cares not at all for decency. And horror seized the
Golden Bird and he said:
“‘This fellow has broken loose from all sense of shame—how could it be
that I should give my Princess to such as he?’ And he uttered this:
“‘Pleasant is your cry. Jewelled is your back. The feathers of your tail
are glorious, but, Sir, to such a dancer, I can give no daughter of
mine!’
“And he bestowed his Princess immediately upon a bird of modest
behaviour, and the Peacock, covered with shame, fled away.
“Therefore, brethren, this monk has now lost the Jewel of the faith as
he once lost a fair wife. For in a former birth, the Peacock was this
shameless monk, but I myself was the Golden Bird.”
And this is a lesson also upon the stately calm which marks the
gentleman according to Oriental opinion. It is the low-born only who may
hurry and storm. Other stories I heard, for my friend was a student of
ancient things, and this belief in lives past and to come is the
spiritual life blood of the Orient. It is the mete-yard of justice. He
asked me whether the Christian faith explicitly denied it, and I could
only reply—No; quoting that strange passage of the Blind Man, when
disciples questioning the Christ—
“Did this man sin or his parents, that he was born blind?”—pass
unrebuked for the implication.
The Hill of Mihintale rises abruptly as Sigurya from the forests, and
the very air about it is holy, for it was on this great hill that
Mahinda, mysteriously transported from India, alighted bewildered as one
waking from a dream. Here the King, Tissa, seeing the saint seated
beneath a tree, heard a voice he could not gainsay that called his name
three times; and so, approaching with his nobles, he received the
Teaching of the Blessed One.
The hill is climbed by wonderful carved shallow steps, broken now, and
most beautiful with an overgrowth of green. At the sides are beds of the
Sensitive Plant, with its frail pink flowers. They would faint and fall
if touched, and here you would not even breathe roughly upon them, for
Buddhists regard the shrinking creatures as living and hold it sinful to
cause such evident suffering.
Descending the grey steps, the shade and sunshine dappling his yellow
robe and bared shoulder with noble colour, came a priest, on his way to
visit the sick of the little village. He stopped and spoke. I told him I
had come from visiting the shrines of Burma, and he desired me to give
him a description of some matters I had seen there. I did so, and we
talked for some time, and it was then mentioned that my food, like his
own, necessitated no taking of life. Instantly his whole face softened
as he said that was glad news to hear. It was the fulfilling of a high
commandment. Would I receive his blessing, and his prayer that the truth
might enlighten me in all things? He bestowed both, and, having made his
gift, went upon his way with the dignity of perfect serenity. That
little circumstance of food (as some would call it) has opened many a
closed door to me in Asia.
At the top of the hill is a deep shadowy rock-pool, with a brow of cliff
overhanging it; and this is named the Cobra’s Bath, for it is believed
that in the past there was a cobra who used, with his outspread hood, to
shelter the saint, Mahinda, from the torrid sun, and who was also so
much a little servant of the Law that none feared and all mourned him
when he passed upon his upward way in the chain of existences. Here,
above the pool where he loved to lie in the clear cool, they sculptured
a great cobra, with three hooded heads, rising, as it were, from the
water. It was most sinuously beautiful and looked like the work of a
great and ancient people, gathering the very emblem of Fear into the
great Peace. On the topmost height was the _stupa_, or shrine, of
Mahinda, incasing its holy relic, and the caves where his priests dwelt
and still dwell. I entered one, at the invitation of a Bhikku, an old
man with singularly beautiful eyes, set in a face of wistful delicacy.
He touched my engraved ring and asked what it might mean. Little enough
to such as he, whose minds are winged things and flutter in the blue
tranquillities far above the earth!
The caves are many, with a rock-roof so low that one cannot stand
upright—a strange, dim life, it would seem, but this Bhikku spoke only
of the peace of it, the calm that falls with sunset and that each dawn
renews. _I_ could not doubt this—it was written upon his every gesture.
He gave me his blessing, and his prayer that I might walk forever in the
Way of Peace. With such friends as these the soul is at home. Peace. It
is indeed the salutation of Asia, which does not greet you with a desire
for health or prosperity as in the West, but only—Peace.
I would willingly tell more of my seekings and findings in Ceylon, for
they were many and great. But I pass on to the little drowsy hill town
of Badulla, where the small bungalows nest in their gardens of glorious
flowers and vines. I sat in the churchyard, where the quiet graves of
English and Singhalese are sinking peacefully into oblivion. It was
Sunday, with a Sabbath calm upon the world. A winding path led up to the
open door of the little English church, a sweet breeze swayed the boughs
and ruffled the long grass of the graves; the butterflies, small Psyches
fluttered their parable in the air about me. A clear voice from the
church repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and many young voices followed. It
was a service for the Singhalese children who have been baptized into
the Christian Faith. They sang of how they had been brought out of
darkness and the shadow of death and their feet set upon the Way of
Peace.
Surely it is so. When was that Way closed to any who sought? But because
man must follow his own categorical imperative, I repeated to myself,
when they were silent, the words of the poet Abdul Fazl, which he wrote
at the command of the Emperor Akbar as an inscription for a Temple in
Kashmir:—
“O God, in every temple I see people that see Thee, and in every
language they praise Thee.
If it be a mosque, men murmur the holy prayer, and if it be a
Christian church they ring the bell from love to Thee.
Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the
mosque, but it is Thou whom I seek from temple to temple.
Thine elect have no dealings with heresy or orthodoxy, for
neither of these stands behind the screen of thy Truth.
Heresy to the heretic and religion to the orthodox!
But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the
perfume-seller!”
Yes,—and an ancient Japanese poet, going yet deeper, says this thing:
“So long as the mind of a man is in accord with the Truth, the Gods will
hear him though he do not pray.”
I passed the night at a little rest-house and next day set out on the
long journey to Polonnarewa, and beyond that to Trincomali, through a
wild part of Ceylon, stopping each night at the rest-houses which mark
the way. Jungle in India is often mere scrub; this is thousands of acres
of mighty forest. A small road has been driven through it, and on either
side rises the dark and secret wall of trees, impenetrable for miles,
knitted with creepers and blind with undergrowth—a dangerous mystery.
“Thousand eyeballs under hoods,
Have you by the hair.”
It seems that every movement is watched, that strained ears listen to
every breath from the secrecy that can never be pierced.
Much farther on the forest opens into the ancient tank of Minneri, for
these great artificial lakes of the bygone Kings here and in India are
called tanks. It is a glorious lake twenty miles in circumference and I
saw it first with the mountains, exquisite in form and colour, rising
behind it in the rose and gold of a great sunset. Some forgotten King
made it to water the country, and there are still the very sluices
unbroken though choked by masses of fallen masonry. It is the work of
great engineers. No place could be more lovely—the silver fish leaping
in translucent water, and one pouched pelican with its ax-like beak
drifting lazily in a glory so dazzling, that one could only glimpse it a
moment in the dipping sparkles of the reflected sun. The way, like the
ascent to Mihintale, was banked with masses of the Sensitive Plant,
lovely with its fragile pink flowers and delicately folding and dropping
leaves, fainting as you brush them in passing.
But the lake—the wide expanse, calm as heaven and a shimmer of rose and
blue and gold! I lingered to watch it—the strange beautiful grotesque
of the great bird floating above its own perfect image. It was evening
and the jungle was sweet with all the scents drawn out of it during the
long sun-steeped day—heavenly scents that come from the teeming life in
the mysterious forests, fresh forests germinating on the ruins of the
old—murmuring, calling, vibrating with life and wonder and strange
existences, and their endless chain of blossom and decay.
It grew dark soon after Minneri, and the fireflies were glittering about
us and the moonlight white on the narrow way. A whispering silence
filled the air with unseen presences as of the feet that long, long
centuries ago trod this way on their errands of pleasure or pain to the
dead city of my goal. I could almost see its spectral towers and palaces
down the moon-blanched glades. Illusion—nothing more.
The driver missed the track to Polonnarewa, but that mattered little, so
wonderful was the night in the lonely place and the great dark where
once a mighty people moved, and now but the moon and stars circle before
a dead majesty.
But at the long last we found our way and the little rest-house which
stands where stood the royal city, near a dim glimmer of water. The only
accommodation was a chair, but that was welcome, and when I woke in the
grey dawn she came gliding with silver feet over the loveliest lake
rippling up to the steps of the fairy house in the woods, and peopled by
the glorious rose lotus, grown by the ancient people for the service of
the Temples. And the traveller whom I met there went out before
breakfast and brought in for provender a pea-hen, a wood pigeon, and a
great grey fish from the lake. For myself, I eat like a Buddhist priest
and am content,—living foods were not for me.
The ruins at Polonnarewa are wonderful indeed, much more perfect than
those of the better known Anaradhapura, though it does not offer, like
the latter, the marvellous row of the Buddhas who have fulfilled their
mission and that Buddha of Love who is yet to come. All about are
temples with colossal Buddhas, palaces, the strangely sculptured stone
rails which are so distinctively Buddhist surrounding richly carved
shrines. Hinduism mingled with Buddhism also. Some of these beautiful
relics have been dug out of the jungle strata, some reclaimed from the
invading growths which are so all-obliterating in a tropic country, and
no doubt there is as much more to be discovered. The carved work is
exquisitely lovely. How strong is the passion for beauty—in the very
ends of the earth it is found, and surely it confirms the Platonic
teaching that it is a reflection of that passion of joy in which the
Creator beheld his work on the seventh day and knew that it was good.
I cannot describe the wonder of passing through these glades and lawns
and seeing the great dagobas, those mighty buildings of brick, but now
waving with greenery, enshrining each its holy relic. Would that it were
possible to imagine the city which dwelt under their shadow! But the
homes of men pass very swiftly away. It is only the homes of their souls
which abide. Yet the jungle is more wonderful than what it buries. The
sunlit walls of green guard the road jealously. The sun-flecks only
struggle a few inches within that line, and then—trackless secrecy. A
bird flew out, jewelled, gorgeous, “Half angel and half bird.” Are there
greater wonders within? Who can tell? It is sometimes death to attempt
to lift the veil of Isis. I saw the gravestone of a young man who for
all his strength and youth was lost in the jungle—caught in the
poisoned sweetness of her embrace and so died. It may have been a lonely
and fearful death, and yet again—who knows! There are compensations of
which we know nothing.
I stayed at the little rest-house of Kantelai on its lake with the
jungle creeping and whispering about it— “Dark mother ever gliding near
with soft feet.” Days to be remembered—unspeakably beautiful—they
leave some precious deposit in the memory almost more lovely than the
sight itself, as in the world of thought the spirit is more than the
body.
And for the end to my journey the great and noble harbour of Trincomali!
I wonder why tourists so seldom go there, but the ways of the tourist
pass understanding. It winds about in lakes of sea blue among palms and
coral bights and glittering beaches. Long ago, the people drifting over
from India built a temple where the old fort now stands, and though thus
polluted the site is still holy and you may see the Brahman priest cast
offerings into the sea from a ledge high up the cliff, with the
worshipping people about him. Then the Portuguese swept down upon Ceylon
in their great naval days when they were the Sweepers of the Sea, and
they destroyed the temple and built their fort. And the Dutch followed,
and the Portuguese vanished, and the French conquered the Dutch, and
again the Dutch the French, and then the English, hawking over the Seven
Seas, pounced like the osprey, and the Dutch sovereignty passed into
their keeping. Did I not say the Island had many masters?
So the English made this a great fortified place, humming with naval and
military activity; men-of-war lying in the bay, guns bristling in the
beautiful old fort that guards the cliff. And now all that too is
gone—blown away like a wreath of mist, and the only soldiers and
sailors are those who will stay forever in the little grave-place under
the palms, and if it so continues I daresay the jungle will take
Trincomali as it has taken the City of Kings.
A beautiful place. I wandered on the beach among the shells one
marvelled to see as a child, when sailor friends gave them into eager
hands—deep brown freckled polished things, leopard-spotted and
ivory-lipped, and so smooth that the hand slips off the perfect surface.
Delicate frailties of opal and pearl shimmering with mystic colour,
spiny grotesques with long thorned stems—there they all lay for the
gathering. And at last I went up into the old fort.
It covers many acres on the cliff and the jungle is steadily conquering
the empty bungalows and fortifications. It is very old, for the Dutch
built it in 1650. Now in the thickets the forsaken guns make an empty
bravado like toothless lions. I saw a deer and her fawn come peering
shyly through the bushes, and they fled before me. The casements are
empty and a flagless flagstaff looks over the heavenly calm of the sea.
Almost lost in the shade I found some old Dutch graves, very square and
formal—a something of the rigidity of the burgomaster about them still,
as of stiff-ruffed men and women. “Here sleeps in God—” said one mossy
inscription (but in Dutch)—and then a break, and then “Johanna” and
another break, and only a word here and there and a long obliterated
date. And the Dutch were masters and Johanna slept in the ground of her
people as securely as if it had been The Hague itself. So it must then
have seemed. And now it is English, and whose next? Truly the fashion of
this world passeth away! They were touching, those old tombs, with
inscriptions that once were watered with tears, that no one now cares to
decipher. And there they lie forgotten in the sighing trees, and the
world goes by. The dominion of oblivion is secure, whatever that of
death may be.
I climbed down to a casement in the cliff, half-way to the sea, a little
shelf overlooking the blue transparence that met the blue horizon, and
wondered what the grave God-fearing talk of the Dutchmen had been as
they leaned over the parapet, discussing the ways of the heathen and the
encroachments of the British. And from there I made my way to the rocks
below with the brilliant water heaving about them. Some large fish of
the most perfect forget-me-not blue shading into periwinkle mauve on the
fins were playing before me, and as they rolled over, or a ripple took
them they displayed the underside, a faint rose pink. Such beautiful
happy creatures in the wash of the wandering water clear and liquid as
light! Sometimes they wavered like moons under a ripple, a blot of
heavenliest blue, submerged and quivering, sometimes a shoal of black
fish barred with gold swam in among them, beautiful to see. I could have
stayed all day, for it was heavenly cool, with a soft sea breeze blowing
through the rocks, but even as I watched a great brown monster came
wallowing through the water, and my beauties fled like swallows.
The touch of tragedy was not wanting, for high on the cliff was a little
pillar to the memory of a Dutch girl who fell in love long ago with an
Englishman—a false lover, who sailed away and left her heartbroken.
Here she watched his sails lessening along the sky, and as they dipped
below the horizon, she threw herself over the cliff in unendurable
anguish.
A tragic story, but it is all so long ago that it has fallen back into
the beauty of nature and is now no more sad than a sunset that casts its
melancholy glory before it fades. Yet I wonder whether in all the hide
and seek of rebirth she has caught up somewhere with her Englishman! She
knows all about Psyche’s wings by this time, and he too must have gained
a dear-bought wisdom through “the great mercy of the gift of departing,”
as the Buddhists call it . . . they to whom death is so small an episode
in so long a story.
I sat by the pillar and watched the dying torch of the sunset
extinguished in the sea—a sea of glass mingled with fire. And very
quietly the stars appeared one by one in a violet sky and it was night.