A Digit of the Moon is the sixteenth part of a much longer work,
entitled _The Churning of the Ocean of Time_[1]. A well-known Hindoo
legend recounts how the gods and antigods assembled to churn the ocean
of milk[2] for the nectar of immortality. After throwing in herbs of
various kinds, they churned it with Mount Mandara, and obtained the
nectar, with certain other things, one of which was the MOON, who by
the way is often called 'the Lord of Herbs.'
But in Sanskrit, the Moon, like the Sun, is a male. Hindoo poets get
over this difficulty, when they want a female Moon, by personifying his
attributes, or making a part do duty for the whole. Thus, his disc is
divided into sixteen parts, called '_streaks_' or '_digits_' and a
beautiful woman is '_a digit of the moon_.'
The whole work, then, called '_The Churning of the Ocean of Time_,' is,
like the Moon, divided into sixteen parts, each named after one of the
digits of the Moon. The one now before the reader is called _A Digit
of the Moon, turned red by the rays of the dawning Sun_[3]. The point
lies in the play on the word red, which in the original also means
'_enamoured_,' '_in love_.' That is to say, that the heroine of the
story 'turns red,' _i.e._ falls in love with the hero, whose name, it
will be found, is Süryakánta, or 'Sunstone.'
* * * * *
I little thought, ten years ago, that it would ever be my lot to play,
as it were, the part of Boccaccio, and bring forth meat from the eater,
stories from a plague. Yet here also the unexpected came about, in the
following way.
Considering how recently Europe has become aware of the very existence
of a Sanskrit literature, I had often wondered whether there might not
be hidden away, here and there, in the vast ocean of India, literary
treasures still undiscovered, which future 'churning' might bring up.
But I did not expect that my question would ever receive a practical
answer. However, a few years ago, when the plague was decimating the
city of Poona, carrying off its victims by hundreds a day, personal
acquaintance with some of the officers appointed by Government to cope
with the enemy put it into my power to do a slight service to an old
Marátha Brahman, whose name, by his own particular desire, I suppress.
My 'service' was indeed a mere trifle, a thing of which no Englishman
would have thought twice. Hindoos, however, look on these matters with
very different eyes. An Englishman's house may be his castle, but a
Hindoo's house is a shrine, a holy of holies, which for unhallowed
footsteps to invade is desecration. I was amused to find that my old
Brahman regarded me almost as though I had preserved his family from
nameless and everlasting infamy. And when he subsequently discovered
that I was a humble student of the 'polished, sacred' language, and
could make shift to admire his beloved Kálidás in the original, his
esteem for me rose to a degree almost embarrassing. He came two or
three times to see me, and took an obvious pleasure in dilating on the
beauties of his ancient authors to one who was at least a good
listener. But it struck me as curious, that every time he went away he
seemed as it were labouring to deliver himself of some important
communication, which nevertheless he shrank from discovering to me; and
he always eventually departed, with an air of some confusion, and his
secret left untold. I thought at the time that he was only nerving
himself to make some request of me, of which he doubted the reception,
and was unable to screw his courage to the sticking-point. But I was
mistaken.
Our interviews came to an abrupt conclusion. The plague stepped in and
swept his family clean away, carrying off his wife, all his children,
and various others of his kin, leaving him alone untouched--but not for
long. One evening, when I came home late, having been out nearly all
day, I found on my doorstep a messenger who had been waiting for me,
with the inexhaustible patience of an Oriental, for many hours. The
plague had remembered my old Brahman at last, and he had sent to ask me
to come and see him, 'on business of importance.' I went off
accordingly to a segregate camp, whither he had been removed, and, much
to my relief, arrived in time to find him conscious: for he was a fine
old gentleman, and when a Brahman is a gentleman, he is a striking type
of humanity. He confused me by thanking me, for the hundredth time,
for my good offices, adding, however, that they had been, in a certain
sense, wasted, as he was the only one left of his family, and now he
also, he was glad to say, was going the same way. He said, that he had
been anxious to see me before he died, because he had something of
value to give me. Hereupon he produced what the uninitiated might have
taken for a packet of ladies' long six-button gloves, pressed together
between two strips of wood about the size of a cheroot box, and tied
round with string; but which from experience I knew to be a
manuscript[4]. He handed it to me, observing that it had been in the
possession of his family from a time beyond memory, and that nothing
would ever have induced him to part with it, had any of that family
remained to possess it; but as they were all gone, and as, moreover, it
would certainly be burned by the plague authorities as soon as he was
dead, it was mine, if I cared to accept it. If not, he said, with an
effort to smile, no matter: it could, like a faithful wife, enter the
fire on the death of its owner: yet that would be a pity, for it was
worth preserving. I accepted his present, and he bade me farewell. I
took leave of the old man, not without emotion, for grief and
approaching death had converted his face to the very incarnation of
misery; and I learned on enquiry that he died, about thirty-six hours
afterwards, in the early morning.
Notwithstanding the hints let fall by its former owner, I own I was
dubious as to the value of my MS., for Hindoos will admire anything in
Sanskrit. But when--after having redeemed it with difficulty from the
ordeal of fire and the plague authorities by subjecting it to severe
fumigations--I fell to examining it[5], I apologised to the _manes_ of
my old Brahman for doubting his judgment, and blessed him for his
present, which is, I will venture to say, unique in literature. But I
will leave the reader to judge of it for himself[6], warning him only
that no language loses so much by translation as the Sanskrit; and
advising him, for his own sake, to read it consecutively through, or he
will lose much[7]. I cannot refrain from observing, however, that it
differs from the general run of classical Sanskrit productions in two
very striking particulars--the simplicity of its style, and the
originality of its matter. As to the last, every body knows that
classical Sanskrit authors have no originality. They do but
rhetorically reset and embellish notorious themes: such originality as
they exhibit lying, not in their subject, but its treatment. Our
author is an exception. Whoever he was, he must have possessed the
gift of imagination: for though the plan of the story was doubtless
suggested by the _Wétála-panchawimshatiká_, yet so novel and poetical
is the use made of it that it may fairly claim to owe but little to its
source, while all the particular stories are curious and original. The
book differs, again, in a remarkable manner from other classical
products of the Hindoo Muse in the simplicity of its style. The author
would seem to have deliberately chosen the epic[8] rather than the
classic style as his model. We find here none of that artificiality,
that straining and effort at style for its own sake, that perverse
elaboration, those insipid intolerable _shléhas_ and interminable
compounds which reach a climax in the appalling concatenations of e.g.
the _Kédambarí_. Mature Hindoo literature exhibits precisely the same
tendency as its architecture: ornament is piled on ornament with
aimless, tasteless extravagance, till the whole becomes nauseous, and
all unity is smothered and annihilated under a load of rhetorical
gewgaws. Just as the rank and luxuriant growth of a creeper will
sometimes drain of its juices, dry up, and destroy the tree it was
designed to adorn, so the over development of gaudy rhetorical blossoms
and effeminate literary prettinesses has desiccated and broken the
spring of the Hindoo mind. The best things in the literature are just
those which are simplest, and therefore as a rule oldest. Literary
arabesque nearly always indicates and springs from the absence of
anything to say; a poverty of creative ideas. But our author has
really a story to tell, and can therefore afford to exhibit it in naked
unadorned simplicity.
Finally, the words which stand as a motto on the title-page have a
history of their own. They are the closing lines of the _Shakuntalá_,
and they mean, briefly: _O Shiwa, grant that I may never be born
again_. There is a _curiosa felicitas_ in their application to the
conclusion of the story, where indeed I found them, scribbled in the
margin by another hand; and though it cannot be proved, I am convinced
that they were placed there by my old Brahman himself (who had Kálidás
by heart), when he took his farewell of the MS., in an access of grief
and despair at feeling his family annihilated and himself deprived of
all that had made his life worth living, by the plague. Let us hope
that the old man has had his wish, and that '_the purple-tinted god_'
has '_destroyed his rebirth_.'
_Mahábaleshwar_, 1898.
[1] _Sansára-ságara-manthanam_.
[2] For _milk_ the author has substituted a technical word which means
_the world considered as the scene of never-ending transmigrations_.
('_O world! O life! O time!_') By this he implies that the _nectar_
of his work it the residuum of much churning of life and experience of
the world, and that it is destined to be immortal.
[3] I have never experienced a stranger or more delightful sensation
than when, as I was translating this work, I saw this very phenomenon
on the Ghauts at Mahábaleshwar: a blood-red Moon going down into the
hills at early dawn, with the Sun rising on the opposite peaks. Only
the redness which the poet ascribes to the Sun was of course due to the
haze of the atmosphere.
[4] Though I make no attempt to assign a date to this MS., the reader
should observe that in India printing has not superseded hand work.
The Hindoos have religious prejudices against printed books, and they
will not use them in their temples, or for sacred purposes.
[5] A well written MS. in the _Déwanágari_ character, is hardly if at
all, inferior to print.
[6] At some future time I hope to translate the remainder, or part of
it.
[7] Its principal beauty lies in the skill of its climax, which is lost
by neglecting the order.
[8] The poem is written in _shlókas_, or _anushtubh_, with occasional
deviations (as e.g. the conclusion) into more elaborate metres.