thief and the atheist, but they did not dispense the words of wisdom
in equal proportions. They warned the former that petty larceny is
punishable with fine, theft on a larger scale with mutilation of the
hand, and robbery, when detected in the act, with loss of life[130];
that for cutting purses, or for snatching them out of a man’s
waistcloth,[131] ‘the first penalty is chopping off the fingers, the
second is the loss of the hand, and the third is death. Then they call
him a dishonour to the college, and they said, “Thou art as a woman,
the greatest of plunderers; other robbers purloin property which is
worthless, thou stealest the best; they plunder in the night, thou in
the day,” and so forth. They told him that he was a fellow who had read
his Chauriya Vidya to more purpose then his ritual.[132] And they drove
him from the door as he in his shamelessness began to quote texts about
the four approved ways of housebreaking, namely, picking out burnt
bricks, cutting through unbaked bricks, throwing water on a mud wall,
and boring one of wood with a centre-bit.
But they spent six mortal hours in convicting the atheist, whose
abominations they refuted by every possible argumentation: by inference,
by comparison, and by sounds, by Sruti and Smriti, i.e., revelational
and traditional, rational and evidential, physical and metaphysical,
analytical and synthetical, philosophical and philological, historical,
and so forth. But they found all their endeavours vain. “For,” it is
said, “a man who has lost all shame, who can talk without sense, and who
tries to cheat his opponent, will never get tired, and will never be put
down.” He declared that a non-ad was far more probable than a monad (the
active principle), or the duad (the passive principle or matter.) He
compared their faith with a bubble in the water, of which we can never
predicate that it does exist or it does not. It is, he said, unreal, as
when the thirsty mistakes the meadow mist for a pool of water. He proved
the eternity of sound.[133] He impudently recounted and justified all
the villanies of the Vamachari or left-handed sects. He told them that
they had taken up an ass’s load of religion, and had better apply to
honest industry. He fell foul of the gods; accused Yama of kicking his
own mother, Indra of tempting the wife of his spiritual guide, and Shiva
of associating with low women. Thus, he said, no one can respect them.
Do not we say when it thunders awfully, “the rascally gods are dying!”
And when it is too wet, “these villain gods are sending too much
rain”? Briefly, the young Brahman replied to and harangued them all so
impertinently, if not pertinently, that they, waxing angry, fell upon
him with their staves, and drove him out of assembly.
Then the four thriftless youths returned home to their father, who
in his just indignation had urged their disgrace upon the Pandits and
Gurus, otherwise these dignitaries would never have resorted to such
extreme measures with so distinguished a house. He took the opportunity
of turning them out upon the world, until such time as they might be
able to show substantial signs of reform. “For,” he said, “those who
have read science in their boyhood, and who in youth, agitated by evil
passions, have remained in the insolence of ignorance, feel regret in
their old age, and are consumed by the fire of avarice.” In order
to supply them with a motive for the task proposed, he stopped their
monthly allowance But he added, if they would repair to the neighbouring
university of Jayasthal, and there show themselves something better
than a disgrace to their family, he would direct their maternal uncle to
supply them with all the necessaries of food and raiment.
In vain the youths attempted, with sighs and tears and threats of
suicide, to soften the paternal heart. He was inexorable, for two
reasons. In the first place, after wondering away the wonder with which
he regarded his own failure, he felt that a stigma now attached to
the name of the pious and learned Vishnu Swami, whose lectures upon
“Management during Teens,” and whose “Brahman Young Man’s Own Book,”
had become standard works. Secondly, from a sense of duty, he determined
to omit nothing that might tend to reclaim the reprobates. As regards
the monthly allowance being stopped, the reverend man had become every
year a little fonder of his purse; he had hoped that his sons would have
qualified themselves to take pupils, and thus achieve for themselves, as
he phrased it, “A genteel independence”; whilst they openly derided the
career, calling it “an admirable provision for the more indigent members
of the middle classes.” For which reason he referred them to their
maternal uncle, a man of known and remarkable penuriousness.
The four ne’er-do-weals, foreseeing what awaited them at Jayasthal,
deferred it as a last resource; determining first to see a little life,
and to push their way in the world, before condemning themselves to the
tribulations of reform.
They tried to live without a monthly allowance, and notably they failed;
it was squeezing, as men say, oil from sand. The gambler, having no
capital, and, worse still, no credit, lost two or three suvernas[134]
at play, and could not pay them; in consequence of which he was soundly
beaten with iron-shod staves, and was nearly compelled by the keeper
of the hell to sell himself into slavery. Thus he became disgusted; and
telling his brethren that they would find him at Jayasthal, he departed,
with the intention of studying wisdom.
A month afterwards came the libertine’s turn to be disappointed. He
could no longer afford fine new clothes; even a well-washed coat was
beyond his means. He had reckoned upon his handsome face, and he had
matured a plan for laying various elderly conquests under contribution.
Judge, therefore, his disgust when all the women--high and low, rich
and poor, old and young, ugly and beautiful--seeing the end of his
waistcloth thrown empty over his shoulder, passed him in the streets
without even deigning a look. The very shopkeepers’ wives, who once had
adored his mustachio and had never ceased talking of his “elegant” gait,
despised him; and the wealthy old person who formerly supplied his small
feet with the choicest slippers, left him to starve. Upon which he also
in a state of repentance, followed his brother to acquire knowledge.
“Am I not,” quoth the thief to himself, “a cat in climbing, a deer
in running, a snake in twisting, a hawk in pouncing, a dog in
scenting?--keen as a hare, tenacious as a wolf, strong as a lion?--a
lamp in the night, a horse on a plain, a mule on a stony path, a boat in
the water, a rock on land[135]?” The reply to his own questions was
of course affirmative. But despite all these fine qualities,
and notwithstanding his scrupulous strictness in invocating the
house-breaking tool and in devoting a due portion of his gains to the
gods of plunder,[136] he was caught in a store-room by the proprietor,
who inexorably handed him over to justice. As he belonged to the
priestly caste,[137] the fine imposed upon him was heavy. He could not
pay it, and therefore he was thrown into a dungeon, where he remained
for some time. But at last he escaped from jail, when he made his
parting bow to Kartikeya,[138] stole a blanket from one of the guards,
and set out for Jayasthal, cursing his old profession.
The atheist also found himself in a position that deprived him of
all his pleasures. He delighted in afterdinner controversies, and in
bringing the light troops of his wit to bear upon the unwieldy masses of
lore and logic opposed to him by polemical Brahmans who, out of respect
for his father, did not lay an action against him for overpowering them
in theological disputation.[139] In the strange city to which he had
removed no one knew the son of Vishnu Swami, and no one cared to invite
him to the house. Once he attempted his usual trick upon a knot of
sages who, sitting round a tank, were recreating themselves with quoting
mystical Sanskrit shlokas[140] of abominable long-windedness. The result
was his being obliged to ply his heels vigorously in flight from the
justly incensed literati, to whom he had said “tush” and “pish,” at
least a dozen times in as many minutes. He therefore also followed the
example of his brethren, and started for Jayasthal with all possible
expedition.
Arrived at the house of their maternal uncle, the young men, as by one
assent, began to attempt the unloosening of his purse-strings. Signally
failing in this and in other notable schemes, they determined to lay in
that stock of facts and useful knowledge which might reconcile them with
their father, and restore them to that happy life at Gaur which they
then despised, and which now brought tears into their eyes.
Then they debated with one another what they should study
* * * * * * *
That branch of the preternatural, popularly called “white magic,” found
with them favour.
* * * * * * *
They chose a Guru or teacher strictly according to the orders of their
faith, a wise man of honourable family and affable demeanour, who was
not a glutton nor leprous, nor blind of one eye, nor blind of both
eyes, nor very short, nor suffering from whitlows,[141] asthma, or other
disease, nor noisy and talkative, nor with any defect about the fingers
and toes, nor subject to his wife.
* * * * * * *
A grand discovery had been lately made by a certain
physiologico-philosophico-psychologico-materialist, a Jayasthalian. In
investigating the vestiges of creation, the cause of causes, the effect
of effects, and the original origin of that Matra (matter) which some
regard as an entity, others as a non-entity, others self-existent,
others merely specious and therefore unexistent, he became convinced
that the fundamental form of organic being is a globule having another
globule within itself After inhabiting a garret and diving into the
depths of his self-consciousness for a few score years, he was able to
produce such complex globule in triturated and roasted flint by means
of--I will not say what. Happily for creation in general, the discovery
died a natural death some centuries ago. An edifying spectacle, indeed,
for the world to see; a cross old man sitting amongst his gallipots and
crucibles, creating animalculae, providing the corpses of birds,
beasts, and fishes with what is vulgarly called life, and supplying to
epigenesis all the latest improvements!
In those days the invention, being a novelty, engrossed the thoughts of
the universal learned, who were in a fever of excitement about it. Some
believed in it so implicity that they saw in every experiment a
hundred things which they did not see. Others were so sceptical and
contradictory that they would not preceive what they did see. Those
blended with each fact their own deductions, whilst these span round
every reality the web of their own prejudices. Curious to say, the
Jayasthalians, amongst whom the luminous science arose, hailed it with
delight, whilst the Gaurians derided its claim to be considered an
important addition to human knowledge.
Let me try to remember a few of their words.
“Unfortunate human nature,” wrote the wise of Gaur against the wise
of Jayasthal, “wanted no crowning indignity but this! You had already
proved that the body is made of the basest element--earth. You had
argued away the immovability, the ubiquity, the permanency, the
eternity, and the divinity of the soul, for is not your favourite axiom,
‘It is the nature of limbs which thinketh in man’? The immortal mind is,
according to you, an ignoble viscus; the god-like gift of reason is the
instinct of a dog somewhat highly developed. Still you left us something
to hope. Still you allowed us one boast. Still life was a thread
connecting us with the Giver of Life. But now, with an impious hand,
in blasphemous rage ye have rent asunder that last frail tie.” And so
forth.
“Welcome! thrice welcome! this latest and most admirable development of
human wisdom,” wrote the sage Jayasthalians against the sage Gaurians,
“which has assigned to man his proper state and status and station in
the magnificent scale of being. We have not created the facts which
we have investigated, and which we now proudly publish. We have proved
materialism to be nature’s own system. But our philosophy of matter
cannot overturn any truth, because, if erroneous, it will necessarily
sink into oblivion; if real, it will tend only to instruct and to
enlighten the world. Wise are ye in your generation, O ye sages of Gaur,
yet withal wondrous illogical.” And much of this kind.
Concerning all which, mighty king! I, as a Vampire, have only to
remark that those two learned bodies, like your Rajaship’s Nine Gems
of Science, were in the habit of talking most about what they least
understood.
The four young men applied the whole force of their talents to mastering
the difficulties of the life-giving process; and in due time, their
industry obtained its reward.
Then they determined to return home. As with beating hearts they
approached the old city, their birthplace, and gazed with moistened eyes
upon its tall spires and grim pagodas, its verdant meads and venerable
groves, they saw a Kanjar,[142] who, having tied up in a bundle the skin
and bones of a tiger which he had found dead, was about to go on his
way. Then said the thief to the gambler, “Take we these remains with us,
and by means of them prove the truth of our science before the people
of Gaur, to the offence of their noses.[143]” Being now possessed of
knowledge, they resolved to apply it to its proper purpose, namely,
power over the property of others. Accordingly, the wencher, the
gambler, and the atheist kept the Kanjar in conversation whilst the
thief vivified a shank bone; and the bone thereupon stood upright, and
hopped about in so grotesque and wonderful a way that the man, being
frightened, fled as if I had been close behind him.
Vishnu Swami had lately written a very learned commentary on the
mystical words of Lokakshi:
“The Scriptures are at variance--the tradition is at variance. He who
gives a meaning of his own, quoting the Vedas, is no philosopher.
“True philosophy, through ignorance, is concealed as in the fissures of
a rock.
“But the way of the Great One--that is to be followed.”
And the success of his book had quite effaced from the Brahman mind the
holy man’s failure in bringing up his children. He followed up this by
adding to his essay on education a twentieth tome, containing recipes
for the “Reformation of Prodigals.”
The learned and reverend father received his sons with open arms. He had
heard from his brother-in-law that the youths were qualified to
support themselves, and when informed that they wished to make a public
experiment of their science, he exerted himself, despite his disbelief
in it, to forward their views.
The Pandits and Gurus were long before they would consent to attend what
they considered dealings with Yama (the Devil). In consequence, however,
of Vishnu Swami’s name and importunity, at length, on a certain day,
all the pious, learned, and reverend tutors, teachers, professors,
prolocutors, pastors, spiritual fathers, poets, philosophers,
mathematicians, schoolmasters, pedagogues, bear-leaders, institutors,
gerund-grinders, preceptors, dominies, brushers, coryphaei, dry-nurses,
coaches, mentors, monitors, lecturers, prelectors, fellows, and heads of
houses at the university at Gaur, met together in a large garden,
where they usually diverted themselves out of hours with ball-tossing,
pigeon-tumbling, and kite-flying.
Presently the four young men, carrying their bundle of bones and the
other requisites, stepped forward, walking slowly with eyes downcast,
like shrinking cattle: for it is said, the Brahman must not run, even
when it rains.
After pronouncing an impromptu speech, composed for them by their
father, and so stuffed with erudition that even the writer hardly
understood it, they announced their wish to prove, by ocular
demonstration, the truth of a science upon which their short-sighted
rivals of Jayasthal had cast cold water, but which, they remarked in the
eloquent peroration of their discourse, the sages of Gaur had
welcomed with that wise and catholic spirit of inquiry which had ever
characterized their distinguished body.
Huge words, involved sentences, and the high-flown compliment,
exceedingly undeserved, obscured, I suppose, the bright wits of the
intellectual convocation, which really began to think that their
liberality of opinion deserved all praise.
None objected to what was being prepared, except one of the heads of
houses; his appeal was generally scouted, because his Sanskrit style was
vulgarly intelligible, and he had the bad name of being a practical man.
The metaphysician Rashik Lall sneered to Vaiswata the poet, who passed
on the look to the theo-philosopher Vardhaman. Haridatt the antiquarian
whispered the metaphysician Vasudeva, who burst into a loud laugh;
whilst Narayan, Jagasharma, and Devaswami, all very learned in
the Vedas, opened their eyes and stared at him with well-simulated
astonishment. So he, being offended, said nothing more, but arose and
walked home.
A great crowd gathered round the four young men and their father, as
opening the bundle that contained the tiger’s remains, they prepared for
their task.
One of the operators spread the bones upon the ground and fixed each one
into its proper socket, not forgetting even the teeth and tusks.
The second connected, by means of a marvellous unguent, the skeleton
with the muscles and heart of an elephant, which he had procured for the
purpose.
The third drew from his pouch the brain and eyes of a large tom-cat,
which he carefully fitted into the animal’s skull, and then covered the
body with the hide of a young rhinoceros.
Then the fourth--the atheist--who had been directing the operation,
produced a globule having another globule within itself. And as the
crowd pressed on them, craning their necks, breathless with anxiety,
he placed the Principle of Organic Life in the tiger’s body with such
effect that the monster immediately heaved its chest, breathed, agitated
its limbs, opened its eyes, jumped to its feet, shook itself, glared
around, and began to gnash its teeth and lick its chops, lashing the
while its ribs with its tail.
The sages sprang back, and the beast sprang forward. With a roar like
thunder during Elephanta-time,[144] it flew at the nearest of the
spectators, flung Vishnu Swami to the ground and clawed his four sons.
Then, not even stopping to drink their blood, it hurried after the
flying herd of wise men. Jostling and tumbling, stumbling and catching
at one another’s long robes, they rushed in hottest haste towards the
garden gate. But the beast, having the muscles of an elephant as well as
the bones of a tiger, made a few bounds of eighty or ninety feet each,
easily distanced them, and took away all chance of escape. To be brief:
as the monster was frightfully hungry after its long fast, and as
the imprudent young men had furnished it with admirable implements of
destruction, it did not cease its work till one hundred and twenty-one
learned and highly distinguished Pandits and Gurus lay upon the ground
chawed, clawed, sucked dry, and in most cases stone-dead. Amongst them,
I need hardly say, were the sage Vishnu Swami and his four sons.
Having told this story the Vampire hung silent for a time. Presently he
resumed--
“Now, heed my words, Raja Vikram! I am about to ask thee, Which of
all those learned men was the most finished fool? The answer is easily
found, yet it must be distasteful to thee. Therefore mortify thy vanity,
as soon as possible, or I shall be talking, and thou wilt be walking
through this livelong night, to scanty purpose. Remember! science
without understanding is of little use; indeed, understanding is
superior to science, and those devoid of understanding perish as did the
persons who revivified the tiger. Before this, I warned thee to beware
of thyself, and of thine own conceit. Here, then, is an opportunity for
self-discipline--which of all those learned men was the greatest fool?”
The warrior king mistook the kind of mortification imposed upon him, and
pondered over the uncomfortable nature of the reply--in the presence of
his son.
Again the Baital taunted him.
“The greatest fool of all,” at last said Vikram, in slow and by no means
willing accents, “was the father. Is it not said, ‘There is no fool like
an old fool’?”
“Gramercy!” cried the Vampire, bursting out into a discordant laugh, “I
now return to my tree. By this head! I never before heard a father so
readily condemn a father.” With these words he disappeared, slipping out
of the bundle.
The Raja scolded his son a little for want of obedience, and said that
he had always thought more highly of his acuteness--never could have
believed that he would have been taken in by so shallow a trick. Dharma
Dhwaj answered not a word to this, but promised to be wiser another
time.
Then they returned to the tree, and did what they had so often done
before.
And, as before, the Baital held his tongue for a time. Presently he
began as follows.
THE VAMPIRE’S EIGHTH STORY -- Of the Use and Misuse of Magic Pills.
The lady Chandraprabha, daughter of the Raja Subichar, was a
particularly beautiful girl, and marriage-able withal. One day as
Vasanta, the Spring, began to assert its reign over the world, animate
and inanimate, she went accompanied by her young friends and companions
to stroll about her father’s pleasure-garden.
The fair troop wandered through sombre groves, where the dark
tamale-tree entwined its branches with the pale green foliage of the
nim, and the pippal’s domes of quivering leaves contrasted with the
columnar aisles of the banyan fig. They admired the old monarchs of the
forest, bearded to the waist with hangings of moss, the flowing creepers
delicately climbing from the lower branches to the topmost shoots, and
the cordage of llianas stretching from trunk to trunk like bridges for
the monkeys to pass over. Then they issued into a clear space dotted
with asokas bearing rich crimson flowers, cliterias of azure blue,
madhavis exhibiting petals virgin white as the snows on Himalaya, and
jasmines raining showers of perfumed blossoms upon the grateful earth.
They could not sufficiently praise the tall and graceful stem of the
arrowy areca, contrasting with the solid pyramid of the cypress, and the
more masculine stature of the palm. Now they lingered in the trellised
walks closely covered over with vines and creepers; then they stopped to
gather the golden bloom weighing down the mango boughs, and to smell
the highly-scented flowers that hung from the green fretwork of the
chambela.
It was spring, I have said. The air was still except when broken by the
hum of the large black bramra bee, as he plied his task amidst the red
and orange flowers of the dak, and by the gushings of many waters that
made music as they coursed down their stuccoed channels between borders
of many coloured poppies and beds of various flowers. From time to
time the dulcet note of the kokila bird, and the hoarse plaint of
the turtle-dove deep hid in her leafy bower, attracted every ear and
thrilled every heart. The south wind--“breeze of the south,[145] the
friend of love and spring” blew with a voluptuous warmth, for rain
clouds canopied the earth, and the breath of the narcissus, the rose,
and the citron, teemed with a languid fragrance.
The charms of the season affected all the damsels. They amused
themselves in their privacy with pelting blossoms at one another,
running races down the smooth broad alleys, mounting the silken swings
that hung between the orange trees, embracing one another, and at times
trying to push the butt of the party into the fishpond. Perhaps the
liveliest of all was the lady Chandraprabha, who on account of her rank
could pelt and push all the others, without fear of being pelted and
pushed in return.