“We will die for Chitor.”
There was silence and Marwar spoke.
“The women?”
“Do they not know the duty of a Rajputni?” said the King. “My household
has demanded that the caves be prepared.”
And the men clashed stew joy with their swords, and the council
dispersed.
Then that very great saint, the Twice-Born, put off the sacred thread
that is the very soul of the Brahman. In his turban he wound it
secretly, and he stained his noble Aryan body until it resembled the
Pariahs, foul for the pure to see, loathsome for the pure to touch,
and he put on him the rags of the lowest of the earth, and taking the
Prince, he removed from the body of the child every trace of royal and
Rajput birth, and he appeared like a child of the Bhils--the vile forest
wanderers that shame not to defile their lips with carrion. And in this
guise they stood before the Queen; and when she looked on the saint, the
tears fell from her eyes like rain, not for grief for her son, nor for
death, but that for their sake the pure should be made impure and the
glory of the Brahman-hood be defiled. And she fell at the old man’s feet
and laid her head on the ground before him.
“Rise, daughter!” he said, “and take comfort! Are not the eyes of the
Gods clear that they should distinguish?--and this day we stand before
the God of Gods. Have not the Great Ones said, ‘That which causes life
causes also decay and death’? Therefore we who go and you who stay are
alike a part of the Divine. Embrace now your child and bless him, for we
depart. And it is on account of the sacrifice of the Twelve that he is
saved alive.”
So, controlling her tears, she rose, and clasping the child to her
bosom, she bade him be of good cheer since he went with the Gods. And
that great saint took his hand from hers, and for the first time in the
life of the Queen he raised his aged eyes to her face, and she gazed at
him; but what she read, even the ascetic Visravas, who saw all by
the power of his yoga, could not tell, for it was beyond speech. Very
certainly the peace thereafter possessed her.
So those two went out by the secret ways of the rocks, and wandering
far, were saved by the favour of Durga.