In all India there is nothing more wonderful than the pilgrimages of
millions, which set like tidal waves at certain seasons to certain
sacrosanct places—the throngs that flock to holy Benares, to Hardwar,
and to that meeting of the waters at Prayag, where the lustral rites
purify soul and body, and the pilgrims return shriven and glad. But of
all the pilgrimages in India the most touching, the most marvellous, is
that to Amarnath, nearly twelve thousand feet up in the Himalayas. The
cruel difficulties to be surmounted, the august heights to be climbed
(for a part of the way is much higher than the height at which the Cave
stands), the wild and terrible beauty of the journey, and the glorious
close when the Cave is reached, make this pilgrimage the experience of a
lifetime even for a European. What must it not be for a true believer?
Yet, in the deepest sense, I should advise none to make it who is not a
true believer—who cannot sympathize to the uttermost with the wave of
faith and devotion that sends these poor pilgrims climbing on torn and
wearied feet to the great Himalayan heights, where they not infrequently
lay down their lives before reaching the silver pinnacles that hold
their hearts’ desire.
I have myself made the pilgrimage, and it was one of the deepest
experiences of my life; while, as for the beauty and wonder of the
journey, all words break down under the effort to express them.
But first for a few words about the God who is the object of devotion.
The Cave is sacred to Siva—the Third Person of the Hindu Trinity; that
Destroyer who, in his other aspects, is the Creator and Preserver. He is
the God especially of the Himalayas—the Blue-Throated God, from the
blue mists of the mountains that veil him. The Crescent in his hair is
the young moon, resting on the peak that is neighbour to the stars. The
Ganges wanders in the matted forests of his hair before the maddening
torrents fling their riches to the Indian plains, even as the
snow-rivers wander in the mountain pine forests. He is also
Nataraja—Lord of the Cosmic Dance; and one of the strangest and
deepest-wrought parables in the world is that famous image where, in a
wild ecstasy, arms flung out, head flung back in a passion of motion, he
dances the Tandavan, the whole wild joy of the figure signifying the
cosmic activities of Creation, Maintenance and Destruction. “For,” says
a Tamil text, “our Lord is a Dancer, who like the heat latent in
firewood, diffuses his power in mind and matter, and makes them dance in
their turn.”
The strange affinity of this conception with the discoveries of science
relating to the eternal dance of the atom and electron gives it the
deepest interest. I would choose this aspect of the God as that which
should fill the mind of the Amarnath pilgrim. Let him see the Great God
Mahadeo (Magnus Deus), with the drum in one hand which symbolizes
creative sound—the world built, as it were, to rhythm and music.
Another hand is upraised bidding the worshipper, “Fear not!” A third
hand points to his foot, the refuge where the soul may cling. The right
foot rests lightly on a demon—to his strength, what is it? A nothing,
the mere illusion of reality! In his hair, crowned with the crescent
moon, sits the Ganges, a nymph entangled in its forest. This is the
aspect of Mahadeo which I carried in my own mind as I made the
pilgrimage, for thus is embodied a very high mysticism, common to all
the faiths.
Of all the deities of India Maheshwara is the most complex and
bewildering in his many aspects. He is the Great Ascetic, but he is also
Lord of the beautiful daughter of the Himalaya,—Uma, Parwati, Gauri,
Girija, the Snowy One, the Inaccessible, the Virgin, the Mystic Mother
of India, to give but a few of her many and lovely names. She too has
her differing aspects. As Kali, she is the goddess of death and
destruction; as Parwati, the very incarnation of the charm and sweetness
of the Eternal Femine. As Uma she is especially Himalayan.
In the freezing mountain lake of Manasarovar she did age-long penance
for her attempt to win the heart of the Great Ascetic, the Supreme
Yogi,—her lovely body floating like a lily upon its icy deeps, and so,
at long last, winning him for ever. She is the seeker of mountains, the
Dweller in the Windhya Hills, the complement of her terrible Lord and
Lover, whose throne is Mount Kailasa. Yet in some of his moods she must
be completely absorbed and subjugated to ensure his companionship, for
he is the archetype of the perfected human yogi of whom says the ancient
Song Celestial that “he abides alone in a secret place without desire
and without possessions, upon a firm seat, with the working of the mind
and senses held in check, with body, head and neck in perfect equipoise,
meditating in order that he may reach the boundless Abyss; he who knows
the infinite joy that lies beyond the senses and so becomes like an
unflickering lamp in a lonely place.”
This union is possible to Parwati and her Lord. So dear are they each to
the other that they are often represented as a single image of which one
half is male, the other female, the dual nature in perfect harmony in
the Divine.
Thus then is the Great God to be visited in the high-uplifted secret
shrine of the mountains, which are themselves the Lotus flower of
creation. At dawn, suffused through all their snows with glowing rose
they dominate Indian thought as the crimson lotus of Brahma the Creator.
At noon, blue in the radiant unveiled blue of the sky they are the blue
Lotus of Vishnu the Preserver, the Pillar of Cosmic Law. At night, when
all the earth is rapt in _samadhi_, the mystic ecstasy, they are the
snowy Lotus, throne of Siva, Maheshwara the Great God, the Supreme Yogi
when he dreams worlds beneath the dreaming moon upon his brow.
And India is herself a petal of the World Lotus of Asia as the Asiatic
mind conceives it. Look at Asia of the maps and reverence the Flower
which thrones all the Gods of Asia.
The Cave at Amarnath is sacred because a spring, eternally frozen, has
in its rush taken the shape of the holy Lingam, which is the symbol of
reproduction and therefore of Life. This is also the Pillar of the
Universe—that Pillar which the Gods sought to measure, the one flying
upward, the other downward, for aeons, seeking the beginning and the
end, and finding none. Yet again, it is the Tree of Life, which has its
roots in Eternity, and branches through the mythology of many peoples.
And if there are degenerated forms of this worship, surely the same may
be said of many others. And it is needful to know these things in order
to realize the significance of the worship.
The pilgrimage can be made only in July and August. Before and after, a
barrier of snow and ice closes the way, and makes the Cave a desolation.
The start is made from Pahlgam, a tiny village on the banks of the Lidar
River in Kashmir, where it leaps from the great glacier of Kolahoi to
join the Jhelum River in the Happy Valley. Pahlgam itself stands at a
height of about eight thousand feet.
The day before we started there was a great thunderstorm, the grandest I
have ever known. The mountains were so close on each side that they
tossed the thunder backwards and forwards to each other, and the
shattering and roaring of the echoes was like the battles of the Gods or
the rolling of Maheshwara’s mighty drum in the mountain hollows, while
the continuous blue glare of the lightning was almost appalling. It was
strange to feel only a little web of canvas between ourselves and that
elemental strife when the rain followed as if the fountains of the great
deep were broken up—cold as snow, stinging like hail, and so steady
that it looked like crystal harpstrings as it fell. Yet next day we
waked to a silver rain-washed world, sparkling with prisms of rain and
dew; fresh snow on the mountains, and delicate webs of soft blue mist
caught like smoke in the pines.
So we set forth from Pahlgam, with our cavalcade of rough hill ponies
carrying the tents and provisions and all our substance, and began our
march by climbing up the river that flows from those eternal heights
into the Pahlgam valley. Much of the way can be ridden if one rides very
slowly and carefully for these wonderful animals are sure-footed as
cats; but the track is often terrifying—broken boulders and the like.
If the ponies were not marvels, it could not be done; and if one were
not a safe rider, one certainly could not stick on. The pony gives a
strong hoist of his fore-legs, and you are up one rock and hanging on by
his withers; then a strong hoist of the hind legs and you are nearly
over his neck; and this goes on for hours; and when it is beyond the
pony you climb on your feet, and ford the torrents as best you may.
Up and up the steep banks of the river we climbed, among the pines and
mighty tumbled boulders. Up by the cliffs, where the path hangs and
trembles over the water roaring beneath. On the opposite side the
mountains soared above the birches and pines, and the torrents hung down
them like mist, falling, falling from crag to crag, and shattering like
spray-dust as they fell. Once a mighty eagle soared above us, balancing
on the wind, and then floated away without a single motion of his
wings—wonderful to see; and the spread of his wings was greater than
the height of the tallest man.
We had long passed the last few huts, and the track wound steadily
higher, when suddenly growing on us, I heard a deep musical roar like
the underlying bass of an orchestra—the full-chorded voice of many
waters. And as we turned a corner where the trail hung like a line round
the cliff, behold, a mighty gorge of pines and uplifted hills, and the
river pouring down in a tremendous waterfall, boiling and foaming white
as it fell into the raging pit beneath.
What a sight! We stopped and looked, every sense steeped in the wonder
of it. For the air was cool with the coolness that comes like breath off
a river; our ears were full of the soft thunder; the smell of pines was
like the taste of a young world in one’s mouth; yet it was all
phantasmal, in a way, as if it could not be real. I watched the lovely
phantom, for it hung like a thing unreal between heaven and earth, until
it grew dreamlike to me and dyed my brain with sound and colour, and it
was hard indeed to pass on.
That night we camped in a mountain valley some two thousand feet above
Pahlgam. It was like climbing from story to story in a House of Wonder.
The river was rushing by our tents when they were pitched, pale green
and curling back upon itself, as if it were loath to leave these pure
heights, and the mountains stood about us like a prison, almost as if we
might go no farther. And when I stood outside my tent just before
turning in, a tremulous star was poised on one of the peaks, like the
topmost light on a Christmas tree, and the Great Bear which in India is
the constellation of the Seven Rishis, or Sages, lay across the sky
glittering frostily in the blue-blackness.
I had a narrow escape that day; for, as I was leading the cavalcade, I
met a wild hill-rider in the trail between two great rocks, and his
unbroken pony kicked out at me savagely with his foreleg and caught me
above the ankle. Luckily, they do not shoe their horses here; but it was
pretty bad for a bit, and I was glad of the night’s rest.
Next day we started and rounded out of the tiny valley; and lo! on the
other side another river, flowing apparently out of a great arch in the
mountainside. Out it poured, rejoicing to be free; and when I looked, it
was flowing, not from the mountain but from a snow-bridge. Mighty falls
of snow had piled up at the foot of the mountain, as they slipped from
its steeps; and then the snow, melting above, had come down as a torrent
and eaten its way through the wide arch of this cave. Often one must
cross a river on these snow-bridges, and at a certain stage of melting
they are most dangerous; for, if the snow should give, there may be
frightful depths beneath.
Here first I noticed how beautiful were the flowers of the heights. The
men gathered and brought me tremulous white and blue columbines, and
wild wallflowers, orange-coloured and so deeply scented that I could
close my eyes and call up a cottage garden, and the beehives standing in
sedate rows under the thatched eaves. And there was a glorious thistle,
new to me, as tall as a man, well armed and girded with blue and silver
spears and a head of spiky rays. Bushes, also, like great laurels, but
loaded with rosy berries that the Kashmiris love.
We turned then round a huge fallen rock, green and moist with hanging
ferns, and shining with the spray of the river, and before us was a
mountain, and an incredible little trail winding up it, and that was our
way. I looked and doubted. It is called the Pisu, or Flea Ascent, on the
dubious ground that it takes a flea’s activity to negotiate it. Of
course, it was beyond the ponies, except here and there, on what I
called breathers, and so we dismounted. The men advised us to clutch the
ponies’ tails, and but for that help it would have been difficult to
manage. My heart was pumping in my throat, and I could feel the little
pulses beating in my eyes, before I had gone far, and every few minutes
we had to stop; for even the guides were speechless from the climb, and
I could see the ponies’ hearts beating hard and fast under the smooth
coats.
But still we held on, and now beside us were blooming the flower-gardens
of the brief and brilliant Himalayan summer—beds of delicate purple
anemones, gorgeous golden ranunculus holding its golden shields to the
sun, orange poppies, masses of forget-me-nots of a deep, glowing blue—a
_burning_ blue, not like the fair azure of the Western flower, but like
the royal blue of the Virgin’s robe in a Flemish missal. And above these
swayed the bells of the columbines on their slender stems, ranging from
purest white, through a faint, misty blue, to a deep, glooming purple.
We could hardly go on for joy of the flowers. It was a marvel to see all
these lovely things growing wild and uncared for, flinging their
sweetness on the pure air, and clothing the ways with beauty. And at
each turn fresh snow-peaks emerged against the infinite blue of the
sky—some with frail wisps of white cloud caught in the spires, and some
bold and clear as giants ranged for battle—the lotus petals of the
Infinite Flower.
And so we climbed up and reached another story, and lay down to rest and
breathe before we went farther up into wonderland.
The top was a grassy “marg,” or meadow, cloven down to the heart of the
earth by a fierce river. Around it was a vast amphitheatre of wild crags
and peaks; and beneath these, but ever upward, lay our trail. But the
meadow was like the field in Sicily where Persephone was gathering
flowers when she was snatched away by Dis to reign in the Underworld. I
remembered Leighton’s picture of her, floating up from the dead dark,
like a withered flower, and stretching her hands to the blossoms of the
earth once more. I never saw such flowers; they could scarcely be seen
elsewhere.
And here the myriad blossoms lay
In shattered rainbows on the grass.
Exulting in their little day
They laughed aloud to see us pass.
We left them in their merriment,—
The singing angels of the snows,—
And still we climbed the steep ascent
Along the sunward way it knows.
The snow had slipped off the meadow,—was rushing away in the thundering
river far below,—and the flowers were crowding each other, rejoicing in
the brief gladness of summer before they should be shrouded again under
the chilly whiteness. But their colour took revenge on it now. They
glowed, they sang and shouted for joy—such was the vibration of their
radiance! I have never dreamed of such a thing before.
And then came our next bad climb, up the bed of a ragged mountain
torrent and across it, with the water lashing at us like a whip. I do
not know how the ponies did it. They were clutched and dragged by the
ears and tails, and a man seized me by the arms and hauled me up and
round the face of a precipice, where to miss one step on the loose
stones would have been to plunge into depths I preferred not to look at.
Then another ascent like the Flea, but shorter, and we were a story
higher, in another wild marg, all frosted silver with edelweiss, and
glorious with the flowers of another zone—flowers that cling to the
bare and lichened rock and ask no foothold of earth.
That was a wild way. We climbed and climbed steadfastly, sometimes
riding, sometimes walking, and round us were rocks clothed with rose-red
saxifrage, shaded into pink, and myriads of snowy stars, each with a
star of ruby in its heart. Clouds still of the wonderful forget-me-not
climbed with us. Such rock gardens! No earthly hand could plant those
glowing masses and set them against the warm russets and golds of the
lower crags, lifted up into this mighty sky world. The tenderness of the
soft form and radiant colour of these little flowers in the cruel grasp
of the rocks, yet softening them into grace with the short summer of
their lives, is exquisitely touching. It has the pathos of all fragility
and brief beauty.
Later we climbed a great horn of rock, and rounded a slender trail, and
before was another camping-place—the Shisha-Nag Lake among the peaks.
We saw its green river first, bursting through a rocky gateway, and
then, far below, the lake itself,—
We passed the frozen sea of glass
Where never human foot has trod,
Green as a clouded chrysoprase
And lonely as a dream of God.—
reflecting the snowy pinnacles above. The splintered peaks stand about
it. Until July it is polished ice, and out of one side opens a solemn
ante-chapel blocked with snow. The lake itself is swept clear and empty.
The moon climbs the peaks and looks down, and the constellations swing
above it. A terrible, lonely place, peopled only by shadows. It was
awful to think of the pomps of sunrise, noon, and sunset passing
overhead, and leaving it to the night and dream which are its only true
companions. It should never be day there—always black, immovable Night,
crouching among the snows and staring down with all her starlight eyes
into that polished icy mirror.
For days we went. We left their mirth
For where the springs of light arise,
And dawns lean over to the earth,
And stars are split to lower skies
White, white the wastes around us lay,
The wild peaks gathered round to see
Our fires affront the awful day,
Our speech the torrents’ giant glee.
We camped above the lake, and it was cold—cold! A bitter wind blew
through the rocks—a wind shrilling in a waste land. Now and then it
shifted a little and brought the hoarse roar of some distant torrent or
the crash of an avalanche. And then, for the first time I heard the cry
of the marmot—a piercing note which intensifies the desolation. We saw
them too, sitting by their burrows; and then they shrieked and dived and
were gone.
We made a little stir of life for a while—the men pitching our tents
and running here and there to gather stunted juniper bushes for fuel,
and get water from an icy stream that rippled by. But I knew we were
only interlopers. We would be gone next day, and chilly silence would
settle down on our blackened camp-fires.
In the piercing cold that cut like a knife I went out at night, to see
the lake, a solemn stillness under the moon. I cannot express the awe of
the solitudes. As long as I could bear the cold, I intruded my small
humanity; and then one could but huddle into the camp-bed and try to
shut out the immensities, and sleep our little human sleep, with the
camp-fires flickering through the curtains, and the freezing stars
above.
Next day we had to climb a very great story higher. Up and up the track
went steadily, with a sheer fall at one side and a towering wall on the
other. We forded a river where my feet swung into it as the pony, held
by two men, plunged through. It is giddy, dazzling work to ford these
swift rivers. You seem to be stationary; only the glitter of the river
sweeps by, and the great stones trip the pony. You think you are done,
and then somehow and suddenly you are at the other side.
And here a strange thing happened. When the morning came, we found that
a _sadhu_—a wandering pilgrim—had reached the same height on his way
to the Cave. He was resting by the way, very wearied, and shuddering
with the cold. So I ventured to speak to him and welcome him to our fire
and to such food (rice) as he could accept from some of our men; and
there, when we stopped for the mid-day meal, he sat among us like a
strange bird dropped from alien skies. Sometimes these men are repulsive
enough, but this one—I could have thought it was Kabir himself!
Scrupulously clean, though poor as human being could be, he would have
come up from the burning plains with his poor breast bare to the
scarring wind, but that some charitable native had given him a little
cotton coat. A turban, a loin-cloth looped between the legs, leaving
them naked, grass sandals on feet coarse with travelling, and a string
of roughly carved wooden beads such as the Great Ascetic himself wears
in his images were all his possessions, except the little wallet that
carried his food—rice and a kind of lentil. I thought of Epictetus, the
saint of ancient Rome, and his one tattered cloak.
A wandering sadhu; far he came,
His thin feet worn by endless roads;
Yet in his eyes there burnt the flame
That light the altars of the Gods.
The keen wind scarred his naked breast.
I questioned him, and all the while
The quiet of a heart at rest
Shone in his secret patient smile.
Yes, he had come from hot Bengal,
From scorching plains to peaks of ice;
Took what was given as chance might fall,
And begged his little dole of rice.
“And have you friends, or any child?
Or any home?” He shook his head,
And threw his hands out as he smiled,
And “Empty,” was the word he said.
And so he sat beside our fire,
As strange birds drop from alien skies,
Gentle but distant, never nigher,
With that remoteness in his eyes.
This was a man of about fifty-five, tall, thin, with a sensitive face,
yet with something soldierly about him; dignified and quiet, with fine
hawk-like features and strained bright eyes in hollow caves behind the
gaunt cheek-bones. A beautiful face in both line and expression; a true
mystic, if ever I saw one!
He told me he had walked from Bengal (look at the map and see what that
means!) and that the poor people were very kind and gave him a little
rice sometimes, when they had it, and sometimes a tiny coin, asking only
his prayers in return. That he needed very little, never touching meat
or fish or eggs, which he did not think could be pleasing to God. For
sixteen years he had been thus passing from one sacred place to the
other—from the holy Benares to Hardwar where the Ganges leaves the
hills, and farther still, praying—praying to the One. “There is One
God,” he said; and again I thought of Kabir, the supreme mystic, the
incarnate Joy, who also wandered through India,—striving, like this
man:
He has looked upon God, and his eyeballs are clear;
There was One, there is One, and but One, saith Kabir,—
To learn and discern of his brother the clod,
And his brother the beast, and his brother the God.
But does it not fill one with thoughts? That man had a soul at rest and
a clear purpose. And the Christ and the Buddha were sadhus; and if it
seem waste to spend the sunset of a life in prayer, that may be the
grossest of errors. We do not know the rules of the Great Game. How
should we judge? So he came with us, striding behind the ponies with his
long steadfast stride, and his company was pleasing to me.
That was a wondrous climb. Had any God ever such an approach to his
sanctuary as this Great God of the heights? We climbed through a huge
amphitheatre of snows, above us the ribbed and crocketed crags of a
mighty mountain. It was wild architecture—fearful buttresses, springing
arches, and terrible foundations rooted in the earth’s heart; and,
above, a high clerestory, where the Dawn might walk and look down
through the hollow eyeholes of the windows into the deeps of the
precipice below.
I suppose the architect was the soft persistence of water, for I could
see deep beach-marks on the giant walls. But there it stood, crowned
with snow, and we toiled up it, and landed on the next story, the very
water-shed of these high places—a point much higher than the goal of
our journey. And that was very marvellous, for we were now in the bare
upper world, with only the sky above us, blue and burning on the snow,
the very backbone of the range; and, like the Great Divide, the rivers
were flowing both ways, according to the inclination of the source.
Before us lay snow which must be crossed, and endless streams and rivers
half or wholly buried in snow. That was a difficult time. The ponies
were slipping, sliding, stumbling, yet brave, capable, wary as could be.
I shall for ever respect these mountain ponies. They are sure-footed as
goats and brave as lions and nothing else would serve in these high
places. In Tibet they have been known to climb to the height of 20,000
feet.
Sometimes the snow was rotten, and we sank in; sometimes it was firm,
and then we slipped along; sometimes riding was impossible, and then we
picked our way with alpenstocks. But everywhere in the Pass summer had
its brief victory, and the rivers were set free to feed the sultry
Indian plains.
At last we won through to another high marg, a pocket of grass and
blossom in the crags; and there, at Panjitarni, we camped. Of course, we
had long been above all trees, but nothing seemed to daunt the flowers.
This marg lay basking in the sun, without one fragment of shade except
when the sun fell behind the peaks in the evening. But the flowers
quivered, glowed, expanded. My feet were set on edelweiss, and the
buttercups were pure gold. The stream ran before me pure as at the
day-dawn of the world, and from all this innocent beauty I looked up to
the untrodden snow, so near, yet where only the eagle’s wings could take
her.
Next day was an enforced rest, for everyone, man and beast, was weary;
so we basked in the sun, reading and writing, and but for the July snow
and the awful peaks, it was hard to believe that one was in the upper
chambers of the King’s Palace. Yet the air was strange, the water was
strange, and it was like a wild fairy-tale to look down from my camp-bed
and see the grey edelweiss growing thick beside it, and hear the shriek
of the marmot.
Next day we should reach the Cave, and when it came the morning looked
down upon us sweet and still—a perfect dawn.
First we crossed the marg, shining with buttercups, and climbed a little
way up a hill under the snows, and then dropped down to the river-bed
under caves of snow for the path above was blocked. It was strange to
wade along through the swift, icy waters, with the snow-caves arching
above us in the glowing sunlight. The light in these caves is a
wonderful lambent green, for the reflected water is malachite green
itself; but I was glad when the passage was over, for it looked as if
some impending mass must fall and crush us.
We climbed painfully out of the water, and in front was a track winding
straight up the mountain. It was clear that we could not ride up; but we
could not delay, so we started as steadily as the ponies. I hardly know
how they did it—the men dragged and encouraged them somehow. And still
less do I know how we did it. The strain was great. At one point I felt
as if my muscles would crack and my heart burst. We did the worst in
tiny stages, resting every few minutes, and always before us was the
sadhu winning steadily up the height. It was a weary, long climb, new
elevations revealing themselves at every turn of the track. Finally, I
fell on the top and lay for a bit to get my wind, speechless but
triumphant.
We rode then along the face of the hill—an awful depth below, and
beside us flowers even exceeding those we had seen. Purple asters, great
pearl-white Christmas roses weighting their stems, orange-red
ranunculus. It was a broken rainbow scattered on the grass. And above
this heaven of colour was the Amarnath mountain at last—the goal.
Then came a descent when I hardly dared to look below me. That too could
not be ridden. In parts the track had slipped away, and it was only
about six inches wide. In others we had to climb over the gaps where it
had slipped. At the foot we reached a mighty mountain ravine—a great
cleft hewn in the mountain, filled like a bowl to a fourth of its huge
depth with snow, and with streams and river rushing beneath. We could
hear them roaring hollowly, and see them now and then in bare places.
And at the end of the ravine, perhaps two miles off, a great cliff
blocked the way, and in it was a black hole—and this was the Shrine.
The snow was so hard that we could ride much of the way, but with
infinite difficulty, climbing and slipping where the water beneath had
rotted the snow. In fact, this glen is one vast snow-bridge, so
undermined is it by torrents. The narrowness of it and the towering
mountains on each side make it a tremendous approach to the Shrine.
A snow-bridge broke suddenly under my pony and I thought I was gone; but
a man caught me by the arm, and the pony made a wild effort and
struggled to the rocks. And so we went on.
The Cave is high up the cliff, and I could see the sadhu’s figure
striding swiftly on as if nothing could hold him back.
We dismounted before the Cave, and began the last climb to the mouth. I
got there first, almost done, and lo! a great arch like that of the
choir of a cathedral; and inside, a cave eaten by water into the rock,
lighted by the vast arch, and shallow in comparison with its height of
150 feet. At the back, frozen springs issuing from the mountain. One of
the springs, the culminating point of adoration, is the Lingam as it is
seen in the temples of India—a very singular natural frost sculpture.
Degraded in the associations of modern ignorance the mystic and educated
behold in this small phallic pillar of purest ice the symbol of the
Pillar of Cosmic Ascent, rooted in rapture of creation, rising to the
rapture of the Immeasurable. It represents That within the circumference
of which the universe swings to its eternal rhythm—That which, in the
words of Dante, moves the sun and other stars. It is the stranger here
because before it the clear ice has frozen into a flat, shallow altar.
The sadhu knelt before it, tranced in prayer. He had laid some flowers
on the altar, and, head thrown back and eyes closed, was far away—in
what strange heaven, who shall say? Unconscious of place or person, of
himself, of everything but the Deity, he knelt, the perfect symbol of
the perfect place. I could see his lips move— Was it the song of Kabir
to the Eternal Dancer?—
He is pure and eternal,
His form is infinite and fathomless.
He dances in rapture and waves of form arise from his dance.
The body and mind cannot contain themselves when touched by his divine
joy.
He holds all within his bliss.
What better praise for such a worshipper before him in whose ecstasy the
worlds dance for delight—here where, in the great silence, the Great
God broods on things divine? But I could not know——
I could not know, for chill and far
His alien heaven closed him in.
His peace shone distant as a star
Remote in skies we cannot win.
I laid my flowers on the altar of ice beside his. Who could fail to be
moved where such adoration is given after such a pilgrimage? And if some
call the Many-Named “God,” and some “Siva,” what matter? To all it is
the Immanent God. And when I thought of the long winter and the snow
falling, falling, in the secret places of the mountains, and shrouding
this temple in white, the majesty of the solitudes and of the Divine
filled me with awe.
Outside the marmot’s cry was shrill,
The mountain torrents plunged in smoke;
Inside our hearts were breathless still
To hear the secret word He spoke.
We heard Him, but the eyelids close,
The seal of silence dumbs the lips
Of such as in the awful snows
Receive the dread Apocalypse.
Later we climbed down into the snowy glen beneath the Cave, and ate our
meal under a rock, with the marmots shrilling about us, and I found at
my feet—what? A tuft of bright golden violets—all the delicate
penciling in the heart, but shining gold. I remembered Ulysses in the
Garden of Circe, where the _moly_ is enshrined in the long thundering
roll of Homer’s verse:—
“For in another land it beareth a golden flower, but not in this.”
It is a shock of joy and surprise to find so lovely a marvel in the
awful heights.
We were too weary to talk. We watched the marmots, red-brown like
chestnuts, on the rocks outside their holes, till everything became
indistinct and we fell asleep from utter fatigue.
The way back was as toilsome, only with ascents and descents reversed;
and so we returned to Panjitarni.
Next day we rested; for not only was it necessary from fatigue, but some
of our men were mountain-sick because of the height. This most trying
ailment affects sleep and appetite, and makes the least exertion a
painful effort. Some felt it less, some more, and it was startling to
see our strong young men panting as their hearts laboured almost to
bursting. The native cure is to chew a clove of garlic; whether it is a
faith cure or no I cannot tell, but it succeeded. I myself was never
affected.
Of the journey down I will say little. Our sadhu journeyed with us and
was as kind and helpful on the way as man could be. He stayed at our
camp for two days when we reached Pahlgam; for he was all but worn out,
and we begged him to rest. It touched me to see the weary body and
indomitable soul.
At last the time came for parting. He stood under a pine, with his small
bundle under his arm, his stick in his hand, and his thin feet shod for
the road in grass sandals. His face was serenely calm and beautiful. I
said I hoped God would be good to him in all his wanderings; and he
replied that he hoped this too, and he would never forget to speak to
Him of us and to ask that we might find the Straight Way home. For
himself, he would wander until he died—probably in some village where
his name would be unknown but where they would be good to him for the
sake of the God.
So he salaamed and went, and we saw him no more. Was it not the mighty
Akbar who said, “I never saw any man lost in a straight road”?
He came with us; we journeyed down
To lowlier levels where the fields
Are golden with the wheat new-mown,
And all the earth her increase yields.
He told us that his way lay on.
He might not rest; the High God’s cry
Rang “Onward!” and the beacon shone,
“And I must wander till I die.
“But when I speak unto my God
I still will tell him you were kind,
That you may tread where He has trod
Until the Straight Way home you find.”
He joined his hands in deep salute,
And, smiling, went his lonely way,
Sole, yet companioned, glad, yet mute,
And steadfast toward the perfect day.
And still I see him lessening
Adown the endless Indian plain.
Yet certain am I of this thing—
Our souls have met—shall meet again.
Thus I have tried to give some dim picture of the wonders of that
wonderful pilgrimage. But who can express the faith, the devotion that
send the poorer pilgrims to those heights? They do it as the sadhu did
it. Silence and deep thought are surely the only fitting comments on
such a sight.