morning, she drew forth from her bosom the bit of thread and proceeded
to use it. She approached the heads to the bodies, and tied some of
the magic string round each neck. But the shades of evening were fast
deepening, and in her agitation, confusion and terror, she made a
curious mistake by applying the heads to the wrong trunks. After which,
she again sat down, and having recited her prayers, she pronounced, as
her husband had taught her, the life-giving incantation.
In a moment the dead men were made alive. They opened their eyes, shook
themselves, sat up and handled their limbs as if to feel that all was
right. But something or other appeared to them all wrong. They placed
their palms upon their foreheads, and looked downwards, and started to
their feet and began to stare at their hands and legs. Upon which they
scrutinized the very scanty articles of dress which the wild men had
left upon them, and lastly one began to eye the other with curious
puzzled looks.
The wife, attributing their gestures to the confusion which one might
expect to find in the brains of men who have just undergone so great a
trial as amputation of the head must be, stood before them for a
moment or two. She then with a cry of gladness flew to the bosom of
the individual who was, as she supposed, her husband. He repulsed her,
telling her that she was mistaken. Then, blushing deeply in spite of her
other emotions, she threw both her beautiful arms round the neck of the
person who must be, she naturally concluded, the right man. To her utter
confusion, he also shrank back from her embrace.
Then a horrid thought flashed across her mind: she perceived her fatal
mistake, and her heart almost ceased to beat.
“This is thy wife!” cried the Brahman’s head that had been fastened to
the soldier’s body.
“No; she is thy wife!” replied the soldier’s head which had been placed
upon the Brahman’s body.
“Then she is my wife!” rejoined the first compound creature.
“By no means! she is my wife,” cried the second.
“What then am I?” asked Devasharma-Gunakar.
“What do you think I am?” answered Gunakar-Devasharma, with another
question.
“Unmadini shall be mine,” quoth the head.
“You lie, she shall be mine,” shouted the body.
“Holy Yama,[160] hear the villain,” exclaimed both of them at the same
moment.
* * * * *
In short, having thus begun, they continued to quarrel violently, each
one declaring that the beautiful Unmadini belonged to him, and to him
only. How to settle their dispute Brahma the Lord of creatures only
knows. I do not, except by cutting off their heads once more, and by
putting them in their proper places. And I am quite sure, O Raja Vikram!
that thy wits are quite unfit to answer the question, To which of
these two is the beautiful Unmadini wife? It is even said--amongst us
Baitals--that when this pair of half-husbands appeared in the presence
of the Just King, a terrible confusion arose, each head declaiming all
the sins and peccadilloes which its body had committed, and that Yama
the holy ruler himself hit his forefinger with vexation.[161]
Here the young prince Dharma Dhwaj burst out laughing at the ridiculous
idea of the wrong heads. And the warrior king, who, like single-minded
fathers in general, was ever in the idea that his son had a velleity for
deriding and otherwise vexing him, began a severe course of reproof. He
reminded the prince of the common saying that merriment without cause
degrades a man in the opinion of his fellows, and indulged him with a
quotation extensively used by grave fathers, namely, that the loud laugh
bespeaks a vacant mind. After which he proceeded with much pompousness
to pronounce the following opinion:
“It is said in the Shastras----”
“Your majesty need hardly display so much erudition! Doubtless it
comes from the lips of Jayudeva or some other one of your Nine Gems of
Science, who know much more about their songs and their stanzas than
they do about their scriptures,” insolently interrupted the Baital, who
never lost an opportunity of carping at those reverend men.
“It is said in the Shastras,” continued Raja Vikram sternly, after
hesitating whether he should or should not administer a corporeal
correction to the Vampire, “that Mother Ganga[162] is the queen amongst
rivers, and the mountain Sumeru[163] is the monarch among mountains, and
the tree Kalpavriksha[164] is the king of all trees, and the head of
man is the best and most excellent of limbs. And thus, according to this
reason, the wife belonged to him whose noblest position claimed her.”
“The next thing your majesty will do, I suppose,” continued the
Baital, with a sneer, “is to support the opinions of the Digambara, who
maintains that the soul is exceedingly rarefied, confined to one place,
and of equal dimensions with the body, or the fancies of that worthy
philosopher Jaimani, who, conceiving soul and mind and matter to be
things purely synonymous, asserts outwardly and writes in his books that
the brain is the organ of the mind which is acted upon by the immortal
soul, but who inwardly and verily believes that the brain is the mind,
and consequently that the brain is the soul or spirit or whatever you
please to call it; in fact, that soul is a natural faculty of the body.
A pretty doctrine, indeed, for a Brahman to hold. You might as well
agree with me at once that the soul of man resides, when at home, either
in a vein in the breast, or in the pit of his stomach, or that half of
it is in a man’s brain and the other or reasoning half is in his heart,
an organ of his body.”
“What has all this string of words to do with the matter, Vampire?”
asked Raja Vikram angrily.
“Only,” said the demon laughing, “that in my opinion, as opposed to the
Shastras and to Raja Vikram, that the beautiful Unmadini belonged,
not to the head part but to the body part. Because the latter has an
immortal soul in the pit of its stomach, whereas the former is a box of
bone, more or less thick, and contains brains which are of much the same
consistence as those of a calf.”
“Villain!” exclaimed the Raja, “does not the soul or conscious life
enter the body through the sagittal suture and lodge in the
brain, thence to contemplate, through the same opening, the divine
perfections?”
“I must, however, bid you farewell for the moment, O warrior king,
Sakadhipati-Vikramadityal[165]! I feel a sudden and ardent desire to
change this cramped position for one more natural to me.”
The warrior monarch had so far committed himself that he could not
prevent the Vampire from flitting. But he lost no more time in following
him than a grain of mustard, in its fall, stays on a cow’s horn. And
when he had thrown him over his shoulder, the king desired him of his
own accord to begin a new tale.
“O my left eyelid flutters,” exclaimed the Baital in despair, “my heart
throbs, my sight is dim: surely now beginneth the end. It is as Vidhata
hath written on my forehead--how can it be otherwise[166]? Still listen,
O mighty Raja, whilst I recount to you a true story, and Saraswati[167]
sit on my tongue.”
THE VAMPIRE’S TENTH STORY [168] -- Of the Marvellous Delicacy of Three Queens.
The Baital said, O king, in the Gaur country, Vardhman by name, there
is a city, and one called Gunshekhar was the Raja of that land. His
minister was one Abhaichand, a Jain, by whose teachings the king also
came into the Jain faith.
The worship of Shiva and of Vishnu, gifts of cows, gifts of lands, gifts
of rice balls, gaming and spirit-drinking, all these he prohibited. In
the city no man could get leave to do them, and as for bones, into
the Ganges no man was allowed to throw them, and in these matters the
minister, having taken orders from the king, caused a proclamation to
be made about the city, saying, “Whoever these acts shall do, the Raja
having confiscated, will punish him and banish him from the city.”
Now one day the Diwan[169] began to say to the Raja, “O great king, to
the decisions of the Faith be pleased to give ear. Whosoever takes the
life of another, his life also in the future birth is taken: this very
sin causes him to be born again and again upon earth and to die And thus
he ever continues to be born again and to die. Hence for one who has
found entrance into this world to cultivate religion is right and
proper. Be pleased to behold! By love, by wrath, by pain, by desire,
and by fascination overpowered, the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahadeva
(Shiva) in various ways upon the earth are ever becoming incarnate.
Far better than they is the Cow, who is free from passion, enmity,
drunkenness, anger, covetousness, and inordinate affection, who supports
mankind, and whose progeny in many ways give ease and solace to the
creatures of the world These deities and sages (munis) believe in the
Cow.[170]
“For such reason to believe in the gods is not good. Upon this earth
be pleased to believe in the Cow. It is our duty to protect the life of
everyone, beginning from the elephant, through ants, beasts, and birds,
up to man. In the world righteousness equal to that there is none. Those
who, eating the flesh of other creatures, increase their own flesh,
shall in the fulness of time assuredly obtain the fruition of Narak
[17l]; hence for a man it is proper to attend to the conversation of
life. They who understand not the pain of other creatures, and who
continue to slay and to devour them, last but few days in the land, and
return to mundane existence, maimed, limping, one-eyed, blind, dwarfed,
hunchbacked, and imperfect in such wise. Just as they consume the bodies
of beasts and of birds, even so they end by spoiling their own bodies.
From drinking spirits also the great sin arises, hence the consuming of
spirits and flesh is not advisable.”
The minister having in this manner explained to the king the sentiments
of his own mind, so brought him over to the Jain faith, that whatever
he said, so the king did. Thus in Brahmans, in Jogis, in Janganis, in
Sevras, in Sannyasis,[172] and in religious mendicants, no man believed,
and according to this creed the rule was carried on.
Now one day, being in the power of Death, Raja Gunshekhar died. Then
his son Dharmadhwaj sat upon the carpet (throne), and began to rule.
Presently he caused the minister Abhaichand to be seized, had his head
shaved all but seven locks of hair, ordered his face to be blackened,
and mounting him on an ass, with drums beaten, had him led all about the
city, and drove him from the kingdom. From that time he carried on his
rule free from all anxiety.
It so happened that in the season of spring, the king Dharmadhwaj,
taking his queens with him, went for a stroll in the garden, where there
was a large tank with lotuses blooming within it. The Raja admiring its
beauty, took off his clothes and went down to bathe.
After plucking a flower and coming to the bank, he was going to give it
into the hands of one of his queens, when it slipped from his fingers,
fell upon her foot, and broke it with the blow. Then the Raja being
alarmed, at once came out of the tank, and began to apply remedies to
her.
Hereupon night came on, and the moon shone brightly: the falling of its
rays on the body of the second queen formed blisters And suddenly from
a distance the sound of a wooden pestle came out of a householder’s
dwelling, when the third queen fainted away with a severe pain in the
head.
Having spoken thus much the Baital said “O my king! of these three
which is the most delicate?” The Raja answered, “She indeed is the most
delicate who fainted in consequence of the headache.” The Baital hearing
this speech, went and hung himself from the very same tree, and the
Raja, having gone there and taken him down and fastened him in the
bundle and placed him on his shoulder, carried him away.
THE VAMPIRE’S ELEVENTH STORY -- Which Puzzles Raja Vikram.
There is a queer time coming, O Raja Vikram!--a queer time coming
(said the Vampire), a queer time coming. Elderly people like you talk
abundantly about the good old days that were, and about the degeneracy
of the days that are. I wonder what you would say if you could but look
forward a few hundred years.
Brahmans shall disgrace themselves by becoming soldiers and being
killed, and Serviles (Shudras) shall dishonour themselves by wearing the
thread of the twice-born, and by refusing to be slaves; in fact, society
shall be all “mouth” and mixed castes.[173] The courts of justice shall
be disused; the great works of peace shall no longer be undertaken; wars
shall last six weeks, and their causes shall be clean forgotten; the
useful arts and great sciences shall die starved; there shall be no Gems
of Science; there shall be a hospital for destitute kings, those, at
least, who do not lose their heads, and no Vikrama----
A severe shaking stayed for a moment the Vampire’s tongue.
He presently resumed. Briefly, building tanks feeding Brahmans; lying
when one ought to lie; suicide, the burning of widows, and the burying
of live children, shall become utterly unfashionable.
The consequence of this singular degeneracy, O mighty Vikram, will
be that strangers shall dwell beneath the roof tree in Bharat Khanda
(India), and impure barbarians shall call the land their own. They come
from a wonderful country, and I am most surprised that they bear it. The
sky which ought to be gold and blue is there grey, a kind of dark white;
the sun looks deadly pale, and the moon as if he were dead.[174] The
sea, when not dirty green, glistens with yellowish foam, and as you
approach the shore, tall ghastly cliffs, like the skeletons of giants,
stand up to receive or ready to repel. During the greater part of the
sun’s Dakhshanayan (southern declination) the country is covered with a
sort of cold white stuff which dazzles the eyes; and at such times the
air is obscured with what appears to be a shower of white feathers or
flocks of cotton. At other seasons there is a pale glare produced by the
mist clouds which spread themselves over the lower firmament. Even the
faces of the people are white; the men are white when not painted blue;
the women are whiter, and the children are whitest: these indeed often
have white hair.
“Truly,” exclaimed Dharma Dhwaj, “says the proverb, ‘Whoso seeth the
world telleth many a lie.’”
At present (resumed the Vampire, not heeding the interruption), they run
about naked in the woods, being merely Hindu outcastes. Presently
they will change--the wonderful white Pariahs! They will eat all food
indifferently, domestic fowls, onions, hogs fed in the street, donkeys,
horses, hares, and (most horrible!) the flesh of the sacred cow.
They will imbibe what resembles meat of colocynth, mixed with water,
producing a curious frothy liquid, and a fiery stuff which burns the
mouth, for their milk will be mostly chalk and pulp of brains; they will
ignore the sweet juices of fruits and sugar-cane, and as for the pure
element they will drink it, but only as medicine, They will shave their
beards instead of their heads, and stand upright when they should sit
down, and squat upon a wooden frame instead of a carpet, and appear
in red and black like the children of Yama.[175] They will never offer
sacrifices to the manes of ancestors, leaving them after their death
to fry in the hottest of places. Yet will they perpetually quarrel and
fight about their faith; for their tempers are fierce, and they would
burst if they could not harm one another. Even now the children, who
amuse themselves with making puddings on the shore, that is to say,
heaping up the sand, always end their little games with “punching,”
which means shutting the hand and striking one another’s heads, and it
is soon found that the children are the fathers of the men.
These wonderful white outcastes will often be ruled by female chiefs,
and it is likely that the habit of prostrating themselves before a woman
who has not the power of cutting off a single head, may account
for their unusual degeneracy and uncleanness. They will consider no
occupation so noble as running after a jackal; they will dance for
themselves, holding on to strange women, and they will take a pride in
playing upon instruments, like young music girls.
The women, of course, relying upon the aid of the female chieftains,
will soon emancipate themselves from the rules of modesty. They will
eat with their husbands and with other men, and yawn and sit carelessly
before them showing the backs of their heads. They will impudently
quote the words, “By confinement at home, even under affectionate and
observant guardians, women are not secure, but those are really safe who
are guarded by their own inclinations “; as the poet sang--
Woman obeys one only word, her heart.
They will not allow their husbands to have more than one wife, and
even the single wife will not be his slave when he needs her services,
busying herself in the collection of wealth, in ceremonial purification,
and feminine duty; in the preparation of daily food and in the
superintendence of household utensils. What said Rama of Sita his wife?
“If I chanced to be angry, she bore my impatience like the patient earth
without a murmur; in the hour of necessity she cherished me as a mother
does her child; in the moments of repose she was a lover to me; in times
of gladness she was to me as a friend.” And it is said, “a religious
wife assists her husband in his worship with a spirit as devout as his
own. She gives her whole mind to make him happy; she is as faithful to
him as a shadow to the body, and she esteems him, whether poor or rich,
good or bad, handsome or deformed. In his absence or his sickness she
renounces every gratification; at his death she dies with him, and he
enjoys heaven as the fruit of her virtuous deeds. Whereas if she be
guilty of many wicked actions and he should die first, he must suffer
much for the demerits of his wife.”
But these women will talk aloud, and scold as the braying ass, and make
the house a scene of variance, like the snake with the ichneumon,
the owl with the crow, for they have no fear of losing their noses or
parting with their ears. They will (O my mother!) converse with strange
men and take their hands; they will receive presents from them, and,
worst of all, they will show their white faces openly without the least
sense of shame; they will ride publicly in chariots and mount horses,
whose points they pride themselves upon knowing, and eat and drink in
crowded places--their husbands looking on the while, and perhaps even
leading them through the streets. And she will be deemed the pinnacle of
the pagoda of perfection, that most excels in wit and shamelessness, and
who can turn to water the livers of most men. They will dance and sing
instead of minding their children, and when these grow up they will send
them out of the house to shift for themselves, and care little if they
never see them again.[176] But the greatest sin of all will be this:
when widowed they will ever be on the look-out for a second husband, and
instances will be known of women fearlessly marrying three, four, and
five times.[177] You would think that all this licence satisfies them.
But no! The more they have the more their weak minds covet. The men have
admitted them to an equality, they will aim at an absolute superiority,
and claim respect and homage; they will eternally raise tempests about
their rights, and if anyone should venture to chastise them as they
deserve, they would call him a coward and run off to the judge.
The men will, I say, be as wonderful about their women as about all
other matters. The sage of Bharat Khanda guards the frail sex strictly,
knowing its frailty, and avoids teaching it to read and write, which it
will assuredly use for a bad purpose. For women are ever subject to the
god[178] with the sugar-cane bow and string of bees, and arrows tipped
with heating blossoms, and to him they will ever surrender man, dhan,
tan--mind, wealth, and body. When, by exceeding cunning, all human
precautions have been made vain, the wise man bows to Fate, and he
forgets, or he tries to forget, the past. Whereas this race of white
Pariahs will purposely lead their women into every kind of temptation,
and, when an accident occurs, they will rage at and accuse them, killing
ten thousand with a word, and cause an uproar, and talk scandal and
be scandalized, and go before the magistrate, and make all the evil as
public as possible. One would think they had in every way done their
duty to their women!
And when all this change shall have come over them, they will feel
restless and take flight, and fall like locusts upon the Aryavartta
(land of India). Starving in their own country, they will find enough
to eat here, and to carry away also. They will be mischievous as the saw
with which ornament-makers trim their shells, and cut ascending as well
as descending. To cultivate their friendship will be like making a gap
in the water, and their partisans will ever fare worse than their foes.
They will be selfish as crows, which, though they eat every kind of
flesh, will not permit other birds to devour that of the crow.
In the beginning they will hire a shop near the mouth of mother Ganges,
and they will sell lead and bullion, fine and coarse woollen cloths,
and all the materials for intoxication. Then they will begin to send for
soldiers beyond the sea, and to enlist warriors in Zambudwipa (India).
They will from shopkeepers become soldiers: they will beat and be
beaten; they will win and lose; but the power of their star and the
enchantments of their Queen Kompani, a daina or witch who can draw the
blood out of a man and slay him with a look, will turn everything to
their good. Presently the noise of their armies shall be as the roaring
of the sea; the dazzling of their arms shall blind the eyes like
lightning; their battle-fields shall be as the dissolution of the world;
and the slaughter-ground shall resemble a garden of plantain trees after
a storm. At length they shall spread like the march of a host of ants
over the land They will swear, “Dehar Ganga[179]!” and they hate nothing
so much as being compelled to destroy an army, to take and loot a city,
or to add a rich slip of territory to their rule. And yet they will go
on killing and capturing and adding region to region, till the Abode of
Snow (Himalaya) confines them to the north, the Sindhu-naddi (Incus)
to the west, and elsewhere the sea. Even in this, too, they will
demean themselves as lords and masters, scarcely allowing poor
Samudradevta[180] to rule his own waves.
Raja Vikram was in a silent mood, otherwise he would not have allowed
such ill-omened discourse to pass uninterrupted. Then the Baital, who in
vain had often paused to give the royal carrier a chance of asking him a
curious question, continued his recital in a dissonant and dissatisfied
tone of voice.
By my feet and your head,[181] O warrior king! it will fare badly
in those days for the Rajas of Hindustan, when the red-coated men of
Shaka[182] shall come amongst them. Listen to my words.
In the Vindhya Mountain there will be a city named Dharmapur, whose king
will be called Mahabul. He will be a mighty warrior, well-skilled in the
dhanur-veda (art of war)[183], and will always lead his own armies to
the field. He will duly regard all the omens, such as a storm at the
beginning of the march, an earthquake, the implements of war dropping
from the hands of the soldiery, screaming vultures passing over or
walking near the army, the clouds and the sun’s rays waxing red, thunder
in a clear sky, the moon appearing small as a star, the dropping of
blood from the clouds, the falling of lightning bolts, darkness filling
the four quarters of the heavens, a corpse or a pan of water being
carried to the right of the army, the sight of a female beggar with
dishevelled hair, dressed in red, and preceding the vanguard, the
starting of the flesh over the left ribs of the commander-in-chief, and
the weeping or turning back of the horses when urged forward.