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BUBBLES OF THE FOAM
So Life's sad Sunset prizes
What Life's gay Dawn despises,
And always Winter wise is
When Summer is no more:
While Love than lightning fleeter
Turns all he touches sweeter,
To leave it incompleter
Behind him, than before.
AMARA
Years, looking forward, all too slow,
Yet looking back, too fast,
What is your joy, what is your woe,
But scented ash that used to glow,
A sandalwood of long ago,
A camphor of the past?
SULOCHANA
[Illustration]
BUBBLES OF THE FOAM
([Sanskrit])
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT
BY
F. W. BAIN
_What! Mortal taste Immortal? Earth, kiss Heaven?
Confusion elemental!, ah! beware!_
SOMADEWA
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1912_
DEDICATED
TO
LADY GLENCONNER
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. A SPOILED CHILD 1
II. THE THIRST OF AN ANTELOPE 27
I. A DAPPLED DAWN 29
II. A GLAMOUR OF NOON 63
III. THE DESERT AND THE NIGHT 89
INTRODUCTION
Four things are never far from you, in old Hindoo literature: underfoot,
all round you, or away on the horizon, there they always are: the
Forest, the Desert, the River, and the Hills.
It is never very easy, to understand the Past that really is a past: and
the age of Forests, like that of chivalry, is gone. But in the case of
ancient India, the chief obstacle to understanding arises from our bad
habit of always looking at the map with the North side up. Why this
inveterate apotheosis of the North? Would you understand the old
Hindoos, you must turn the map of India very nearly upside down, so as
to get Peshawar at the bottom, and the Andaman Islands exactly at the
top. And then, history lies all before you, right side up, and you get
your intellectual bearings, and take in the early situation, at a
glance. Entering, like those old nomads, through the Khaibàr, you find
yourself suddenly in the Land of Streams: and as you drift along, you
go, simply because you must, straight on, down the River "ganging on"
(_Gangá_) towards the rising sun, "ahead," (which is the Sanskrit term
for East,) all under the colossal wall of Hills, the home of Snow, where
the gods live, on your left (_uttara_, the North, the heights;) while on
the South, (the _right_ hand, _dakshina_, the Deccan) you are debarred,
not by Highlands, but by two not less peremptory rebutters: first, by
the Desert, _Marusthali_, the home of death: and then again, a little
farther on, by the Forest of the South: the vast, mysterious,
impenetrable Wood, of which the Rámáyana preserves for us the pioneering
record and original idea, with its spell of the Unknown and the
Adventure (like the Westward Ho! of a later age) with its Ogres and its
Sprites, its sandal trees and lonely lotus-tarns, its armies of ugly
little ape-like men, and its legendary Lanka (Ceylon) lost in a kind of
halo of shell-born pearls, and gems, and their Ten-headed Devil King,
Ráwana, away, away, at the very end of all: so distant, as to be little
more than mythical, little better than a dream. No! Those who wish to
see things with the eyes of old Hindoos must not begin, as we did, and
do still, with Ceylon, and the adjacent coasts of Coromandel and
Malabar. That is the wrong, the _other_ end: it is like starting
English history from "the peak in Darien."
But our particular concern, in these pages, is with the Desert. The
conventional notion of a desert, as a colourless and empty flat of sand,
is curiously unlike the thing itself, which is a constantly changing,
kaleidoscopic sea of colour, made up of rainbow stripes, black, golden,
red, dazzling white, and blue, with every kind of lights and shadows,
strange hazes, transparencies, and gleams. True, the ground you actually
tread upon is bare: but it is clothed with raiment woven by that magic
artist, Distance, out of cloud and heat and air and sky. And so, when
these old Hindoo people came to make a closer acquaintance with the
Desert, so dangerous to enter, so difficult, as Mahmood subsequently
found, to cross, they discovered, that over and above the plain prosaic
danger, this Waste of Sand laid, like a very demon, goblin snares for
the unwary traveller's destruction, in the form of its Mirage. Ignorant
of "optical phenomena," they gazed at this strange illusion, these
phantom trees and water, these mocking semblances of cities that
vanished as you reached them, with astonishment, and even awe. It struck
their imagination, and they gave to it a name scarcely less poetical
than the thing: calling it "_deer-water_," or the "_thirst of the
antelope_."[1] Nor was this all. For the apparition was a kind of
symbol, made as it were expressly for their own phenomenology: it
contained a moral meaning that harmonised precisely with all their
philosophical ideas. What could be a better illustration of that MÁYÁ,
that metaphysical Delusion, in which all souls are wrapped, which leads
them to impute Reality to the Phantasms, the unsubstantial objects of
the senses, and lures them on to moral ruin as they wander in the waste?
And accordingly, we find the poets constantly recurring to this _thirst
of the gazelle_, as an emblem of the treacherous and bewildering
fascination of the fleeting shadows of this lower life (_ihaloka_;) the
beauty that is hollow, the Bubble of the World. And thus, Disappointment
is of the essence of Existence: disappointment, which can only come
about, when hopes and expectations have been founded on a want of
understanding (_awiweka_;) a blindness, born of Desire, that sets and
keeps its unhappy victims hunting, in vain, for what is not to be found.
[Footnote 1: I am told, by a pundit in these matters, that the term is
found at least as early as Patanjali (the _Mahábháshya_;) that is
probably, the latter half of the second century B.C.: and hence, it must
have originated long before.]
Especially, essentially, in love: love, which has its origin in Dream,
its acme in Ecstasy, and its catastrophe in Disillusion: love, which is
life's core and kernel and epitome, the focus and quintessence of
existence. A life that is without it has somehow missed its mark: it is
meaningless and plotless, "a string of casual episodes, like a bad
tragedy." For what, after all, is Love? Who has given an account of it?
Plato's fable, which makes Love the child of Satiety and Want, or
Poverty and Plenty, is a pretty piece of fancy: it is clever: but like
mathematics, an explanation of the brain rather than the heart.
Something is missing. For Plato, almost always delicate and subtle, is
never tender: the reason is, that he was atrophied on the feminine side:
he does not consequently understand sex, being himself only half a man:
that is, only man and nothing more. But all the really great imaginative
men are bi-sexual: they have a large ingredient of woman in their
composition, which gives to their divination an extra touch of something
that others cannot reach. And so, with equal poetry, yet with a pathos
infinitely deeper, our Milton makes Love the child of Loneliness:[2] a
parentage evinced by the terrible melancholy of Love when he cannot find
his proper object, and the blank desolation and despair of the frightful
void and blackness left behind, when he has lost it. But now, it is
just this intolerable loneliness which makes him idealise the
commonplace, and see all things in the light of his own yearning,
creating for himself visions of unimaginable happiness, which presently
vanish, to resolve his Eden into nothing, and leave him, with no
companion but the horror of his own intensified isolation, in the sand.
A situation, which hardly any lover that really is a lover can endure,
without going mad. They are very shallow theologians, who by way of
pandering to sentimental prejudices make the essence of the Deity to
consist in Love. Poor Deity! his life would be a Hell, past all human
imagination: an everlasting Loneliness, with no prospect of release. For
it is precisely to escape from this hell that so many forlorn lovers
take refuge in the tomb: a resource not available to those who cannot
die. Death is not always terrible: sometimes he is kind.
[Footnote 2: In his _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_.]
* * * * *
Such then is the theme of _Bubbles of the Foam_: a little love-story,
whose title, like that of all her elder sisters, has in the original a
double application, by reason of the ambiguity of the last word, to
Love, and to the Moon. We might also render it, _A Heavenly Bubble_, or,
_Love is a Bubble_, or _Nothing but a Bubble_, or _A Bubble of the
World_,[3] thinking either of Love or the Moon. For the Moon, like the
goddess of Love, rose originally from the sea: and they retain traces of
their origin, both in their essence and their appearance. For what is
more like a great Foam-Bubble than the Moon? and what is more like the
delusion of love than a bubble of the foam, so beautiful in its play of
colour, while it endures: so evanescent, so hollow, leaving behind it
when it bursts and disappears nothing but a memory, and a bitter taste
of brine? And as love is but a bubble, so are all its victims merely
bubbles of a bubble: for this also is mirage.
[Footnote 3: I was sorely tempted to give it the title of _Mere Foam_:
which, if the reader would kindly understand _mere_ in its German, its
Russian, its Latin, and its ordinary English sense, would be an exact
translation. But it has an unfortunate suggestion (_meerschaum_) which
made it impossible.]
Mirage! mirage! That is the keynote of the old melancholy Indian music;
the bass, whose undertone accompanies, with a kind of monotonous
solemnity, all the treble variations in the minor key. The world is
unreal, a delusion and a snare; sense is deception, happiness a dream;
nothing has true being, is absolute, but virtue, the sole reality; that
which most emphatically IS,[4] attainable only through knowledge, the
great illuminator, the awakener to the perception of the truth. We move,
like marionettes, pulled by the strings of our forgotten antenatal
deeds, in a magic cage, or Net, of false and hypocritical momentary
seemings: and bitter disappointment is the inevitable doom of every
soul, that with passion for its guide in the gloom, thinks to find in
the shadows that surround it any substance, any solid satisfaction; any
permanent in the mutable; any rest in the ceaseless revolution; any
peace which the world cannot give. Who would have peace, must turn his
back upon the world; it lies the Other Way. Three are the Ways: the Way
of the World, the Way of Woman, the Way of Emancipation.
[Footnote 4: _Sat._ The thesis of Socrates, that virtue is knowledge:
probably borrowed, by steps that we cannot trace, through Pythagoras or
"Orpheus" from the East.]
Does anyone in Europe care about this last, this Way of Emancipation?
No: it is Liberty that preoccupies the European, who about a century ago
seemed, like the old Athenian, suddenly to catch sight of Liberty in a
dream.[5] And yet, who knows? For Europe also is disappointed: there
seems, after all, to be something lacking to this Liberty, something
wrong. With her Utopias ending in blind alleys, or issues unforeseen:
with her sages discovered to be less sages than they seemed: with her
Science turning superstitious, her Literature wallowing in the gutter,
and her women descending from the pedestal of sex to play the virago in
the contamination of the crowd: with so many other things, not here to
be considered, to raise a doubt, whether this Liberty is taking her just
where she wished to go, what wonder if even Europe should begin to
meditate on means of emancipation, even if only from vulgarity, and
steal a furtive glance or two towards the East, to see, whether, by
diligently raking in the ashes of ancient oriental creeds, she might not
discover here and there a spark, at which to rekindle the expiring
candle of her own. For there seems to be some curious indestructible
_asbestos_, some element of perennial, imperturbable tranquillity and
calm, away in India, which is conspicuous only by its absence, in the
worry of the West. Where does it come from? What does it consist in? Is
there a secret which India has discovered, which Europe cannot guess? Is
there anything in it, after all, but barbaric superstition, destined to
fade away and disappear, in the sunrise of omniscience?
[Footnote 5: [Greek: honar heleutherias horhôntas. Plutarch.]]
I cannot tell: but well I recollect a fugitive impression left on me by
an early morning in Benares, now many years ago. I threaded its
extraordinary streets, narrower than the needle's eye, and crowded with
strange, lithe, nearly naked human beings, with black, straight, long
wet hair, and brown shining skins, jostled at every step by holy bulls
or cows, roaming at their own sweet will with large placid lustrous
eyes, in an atmosphere heavy with the half-delicious, half-repulsive
odour of innumerable flowers, mostly yellow, that lay about everywhere
in heaps, fresh and rotten, till I came out finally upon the river bank.
A light steamy mist, converted by the low sun's horizontal rays into a
kind of reddish-golden veil, hung in the quiet air, lending an almost
magical effect to the long row of great temples, whose steps run down
into the river, along the northern bank: half of them in ruins, and
looking as if they must presently slide away into the water and
disappear. And as I floated slowly down, I watched with curiosity, half
wondering if I was dreaming, the throng of devotees, sitting, lying,
gliding here and there, like an antique procession on an old Greek
frieze or vase; some muttering and praying, others bathing, others again
standing motionless as statues in the stream, buried in a sort of
_samádhí_ meditation: every outline of every attitude, in that clear
Indian air, as sharp as if cut with scissors out of paper. And lying
close beside, cheek by jowl with the bodies still alive, the ashes of
dead bodies just burned or still burning on the Ghát. Life and Death
touching, running into one another, and nobody amazed: all as it should
be, and a matter of course!
England and India, bureaucracy, democracy, sedition, education, politics
and Durbars:--the world with all its tumult and its roaring passes clean
over their heads, unheeded, unobserved: for them the noise and bustle do
not matter, do not trouble: they do not hear, they do not listen, they
do not even care. It is curious, this peace, this indifference, this
calm: it does not seem reality; it is like a thing looked at in a
picture, like a dream. And, somehow, as I gazed at it, mechanically
there came into my mind, as it were of its own accord, a story I had
read in some old navigator's "yarn," of the albatross, sleeping on the
great South Sea, in the fury of a storm, with its head beneath its wing.
CEYLON, 1912
I
A SPOILED CHILD
I
A SPOILED CHILD
BENEDICTION
_A bow to the mystical evening dance of the Rider on the Mouse,[6] who
whirling round his elephant trunk, smeared with wet vermilion, suddenly
shoots it straight up into the purple sky, and stands for a single
instant still, poised in the yellow twilight, as if to make a coral
handle for the white umbrella of the laughing Moon._
[Footnote 6: Ganesha.]
I
There is, in the western quarter, a land of lonely desolation, that
resembles a very sea, but of sand instead of brine, and rightly named
Marusthali, being a very home of death, sending back to the midday sun
rays hotter than his own, and challenging the midnight sky, with silent
ashy laughter, as though to say: What am I but the rival and reflection
of thyself, with bones instead of stars, and tracks of wasted skeletons
instead of a Milky Way. And there, upon a day, it came about that
Maheshwara was roaming with Párwatí in his arms. And as they floated
swiftly on, over the dusty waste, they watched their own huge shadows
sweeping like the forms of clouds across the burning sand, exactly
underneath, for it was noon: and the surface of the desert shook and
quivered in the stillness, as if the wind, asleep, had, like a tired
traveller, sought refuge from the fury of the sun above their heads. And
all at once, the Daughter of the Snow exclaimed: See, there is the
mirage! Let us descend, and sit for a little while upon the sand: for I
love to watch this wonder, which resembles in its far faint blue the
colour of a dream. And accordingly, to do her pleasure, Maheshwara sank
softly to the earth, settling on it like a cloud gently resting on a
hill.
So as they looked, after a while, that slender goddess said again:
Surely it is a shame, and well may the poor antelopes be mistaken and
deceived. For who could believe yonder water to be only an illusion? And
when the eyes of even gods are bewildered by the cheat, how much more
the eyes of thirsty and unreflecting little deer!
Then the Moony-crested deity said slowly: O Daughter of the Snow, thy
own reflection on this beautiful illusion is the truth. And yet, well
were it for the world, were its illusion limited only to its eyes, not
extending, as it actually does, to its understanding also. For this
deceptive picture on the sand is far inferior in power and importance to
the bewildering delusion of this world below, fluttering about whose
shifting dancing light, like moths about a wind-blown torch, men singe
their silly souls, and burning off their wings, drop helpless, maimed
and mutilated, into the black gulf of birth and death, and lose
emancipation; till, after countless ages, their wings begin to sprout
and grow again, under the influence of works. Yet they who after all
emerge, and soar away, unburdened even by an atom of the guilt that
weighs them down, and brings them back into the vortex of rebirth, are
very few. And yonder bones, now lying in the sand, could they but rise
and speak, would be a proof of what I say.
And the goddess looked, and saw, close by, a little heap of bones, that
lay half-buried in the sand. And she said with curiosity: Whose are the
bones, and how are they a proof of thy consideration?
And Maheshwara replied: These are bones, not of a man, but of a camel,
that perished in the desert long ago. For into this body of a camel
fell the soul of which I spoke, in punishment of crimes committed in the
birth before, in the body of a man; who, blinded by passion, slew three
of his fellow mortals; as, if thou wilt, I will tell thee while we sit,
watching the illusion of the senses, that so closely represents the
illusion of the souls of the lovers in the tale.
II
Know, then, that once upon a time, long ago, all the gods had assembled
in the hall of Indra's palace, to listen to a singing competition that
took place among the Gandharwas. And all sat listening attentively, till
at length, all at once, came a pause in the performance. And in the
silence, while all the heavenly singers rested, it so fell out, by the
decree of destiny, that the flowery-arrowed god,[7] striving to
recollect a cadence that had pleased him, hummed it, as well as he
could, over again, aloud; and like the unskilful imitator that he was,
played havoc with his model, stumbling at the quarter tones, and singing
fiat. And out of delicacy and politeness, the gods all turned away their
faces, hiding their smiles, except Brahma,[8] whose face never moved.
But Kámadewa, looking up suddenly, caught the vestige of a smile,
hovering, just before it disappeared, on the corner of the lips of
Saraswati, as if it were unwilling to leave a resting-place so
unutterably sweet as that lovely lady's mouth. And instantly, he turned
red and pale alternately, with rage that followed shame: so little does
he who delights in making others blush like doing it himself. And
suddenly taking fire, he cried aloud: Ha! dost thou turn me into
ridicule, O thou malapert blue-stocking?[9] Then will I curse thee for
thy pains. Fall instantly into a lower birth, and suffer anguish in the
form of a mortal woman, for thy presumption and ill-mannered mirth.
[Footnote 7: _i.e._ the god of love, Kámadewa.]
[Footnote 8: It would have been useless for Brahma to turn away his
face, since he has four; one on every side.]
[Footnote 9: _Kupanditá_, the exact equivalent of our word. Saraswati is
the Hindoo Pallas Athene; with this distinction in her favour, that she
is as gentle as the Greek lady is the reverse. The _flava virago_ of
Ovid becomes in India a lotus white and pure as her own celestial
smile.]
And instantly, all the other gods, hearing him, broke out into a very
storm of indignation. And buzzing like infuriated bees around one who
seeks to rob them of their honey, they swarmed about that god of love,
exclaiming all together: What! shall Heaven be bereft, even for a very
little while, of the very crest-jewel of its brow, because of thy loss
of self-control, and a fault on her part which was not a fault at all,
but only the appropriate reproof of thy ill-advised endeavour to play
the musician without possessing the necessary skill? And there arose a
tumult in the hall; and finally, they made me arbitrator to settle the
dispute, knowing that Ananga was afraid of me, as well might he be[10].
And so, after all were silent, I spoke. And I said, very slowly: O
bender of that bow, whose string is a row of bees, thou art surely
altogether inexcusable, first for thy singing, and secondly for thy loss
of temper, and finally for thy curse. For who could be so harsh as to
strike Saraswati, even with a _shirísha_ petal? But now, the mischief is
utterly beyond repair, and once spoken, the curse cannot be
recalled.[11] And whether she will or no, she must now go to earth, and
leave us for a time, till thy curse has spent its force. And yet, for
all that, it is not right that the doer of injustice such as thine
should escape scot-free. Therefore now I will give thee curse for
curse, and thou shalt eat the fruit of thy own tree. Fall then,
immediately into the body of a man, and suffer that mortality which thou
hast laid upon Saraswati. And thy fortune shall be interwoven with her
own, so that thy curse shall be determined by the quality and period of
hers.
[Footnote 10 Because Maheshwara had burned him, on a previous occasion,
with fire from his eye.]
[Footnote 11: In these and similar ideas, the Hindoos resembled the
ancient Romans: the letter was decisive and irremediable, _uti lingua
nuncupassit, ita jus esto_.]
And then, as he listened to my doom, Kámadewa turned paler than the
ashes to which I had reduced him long ago, finding himself punished for
his insolence by me, for the second time. But the gods all exclaimed,
with approbation and delight: Victory to Maheshwara! who has once more
bitten the biter, and condemned him, by a sentence even more merciful
than he deserved. For what could be more intolerable than even Heaven
without Saraswati, unless it be the curse that is about to produce such
a melancholy condition of affairs?
And then, those two deities disappeared suddenly from Heaven, and
descended to be born as man and woman on the earth.[12]
[Footnote 12: This exordium, which has points of resemblance with that
of the insufferable Bána's _Harsha-charita_, is only the Hindoo method
of declaring that the two characters presently to be brought upon the
scene are mortal incarnations of love and charm: as we call a man, an
Adonis, or a woman, a Venus.]
III
Now just at that very moment, it happened, that there were living in the
desert two Rajpoots of the race of the Moon; and the name of the one was
Bimba, and that of the other, Jaya.[13] And Saraswati was born as the
daughter of the wife of Bimba, while Kámadewa was born as the son of the
wife of Jaya. Now Bimba was a king: and Jaya was his cousin on the
mother's side. And very soon afterwards, Jaya set upon his cousin,
laying claim to the throne, and driving him away, took his kingdom, and
kept it for himself. And he caught the wife of Bimba, and put her to
death, as he would have done also with her daughter and her husband. But
Bimba succeeded in escaping with his daughter, and ran away and hid
himself. So Jaya remained in triumph, reigning over the kingdom, whose
capital stood on the very spot on which we are sitting now. For the
kingdoms of the earth come and go upon it, like the shadows of the
clouds: and they grow up suddenly like grass, and perish a little later,
and vanish clean away, leaving behind them absolutely nothing but
mounds, such as those now lying all about thee, and fragments of
recollections, and half-forgotten names, like the dreams of the night
which morning obliterates and drives away, vaguely hanging in its memory
like wreaths of mist curling and twisting on the black still surface of
a pool in some dark valley screened from the early sun by one of thy
father's[14] peaks.
[Footnote 13: _i.e._ _the disc of the moon_, and _victory_. Pronounce Jaya
to rhyme with _eye_.]
[Footnote 14: _i.e._ the Himálaya.]
And of all the elements that made up Java's good fortune, there was not
one which filled him with such pride and exultation as his son. And he
looked upon him as the very fruit of his birth in visible form, little
dreaming, that could he but have looked into the future, and seen what
was coming, he would rather have deemed himself more fortunate to live
and die without any son at all, than to have begotten such a son as he
actually had. For sons resemble winds, which sometimes lift their
families like clouds to heaven, and sometimes dash them to the earth,
like hail.
For having waited so long to get a son at all, till hope was all but
gone, the joy of both his parents, when he actually arrived, was so
extravagantly great, that they could not make too much of him. And as he
grew up, they spoiled him so completely, by the want of all discretion
in their admiration and the flattery of their affectionate caresses,
that after a while he became utterly intolerable, even to themselves.
And this came about, not only by reason of their own foolishness, but
also by the very disposition and qualities of that son himself. For he
was so marvellously beautiful, that every time they saw him, they could
hardly believe their own eyes, and were ready to abandon the body out of
joy. And in the intoxication of delight they gave him the name of
Atirupa,[15] which was no more than he deserved. And he became a byword
and a wonder in the world, till the heart of his mother almost broke
with the swelling of its own pride. For nothing like him had ever been
seen by anybody, even in a dream, since his beauty did not in the least
resemble that of other men, but hovered as it were half-way between one
sex and the other, as if the Creator when he made him, unable to decide,
whether to make of him a man or a woman, had combined, by some miracle
of omnipotence and skill, the fascinations of the two. For though he was
tall, and strong, yet strange! his body and his limbs were rounded, and
delicately shaped, and slender, with soft and tender hands and feet that
were almost too small, even for a girl: and as he moved, he fell as if
by accident into attitudes that as it were imitated unconsciously the
careless grace of Shrí[16], caught unaware when she thinks that there is
nobody to look at her, and carved by a cunning sculptor in stone upon a
temple wall; so that the eyes of all followed him as if against their
will, drawn to him by an involuntary admiration that they could not
understand, not realising that in his case only, the beauty of their own
sex was reinforced, and as it were, reduplicated with the magic of a
spell, by the mysterious and additional fascination of the other. And
his face was so strange that whoever saw it, started, and fell, after a
little while, into a kind of dream. And yet this was not merely by
reason of its beauty, though that beauty was excessive, resembling a
vision seen suddenly in the water by a Dryad, musing at midnight by a
moonlit pool, with eyes that resembled the reflections of the shadows of
the lotuses, and eyebrows that met together, in the middle of his brow,
each drawn exactly in imitation of the other, like a lotus-fibre half in
and half out of water, and lips that were almost too red, resembling
that love-sick nymph's own pair of _bimba_ lips, mirrored[17] in the
clear black water, and dying to be kissed by others like themselves.
But wonderful! the Creator had put into his face some ingredient of
recollection, so that without knowing why, every beholder found himself
plunged, as it were, into the agitation of dreamy reminiscence, and said
within himself: Ha! now, somewhere or other, in this birth or another, I
have seen that miracle of a face before. And each went away with a heart
that was unwilling to depart, haunted as it were by dim desire for
something he knew not what stirring in the depths of his memory, that he
could not remember and yet had not forgotten, like the thirst for the
repetition of the sweetness of a bygone dream.[18] And all the more,
because his voice resembled a music that was playing a melody suggested
by the theme of his face. For it was low and soft, like that of a woman,
and yet deep, like that of a man: and it seemed to be made of sound
stolen from the pipe of Krishna, in order to enable it itself to steal
away the senses of the world: so that as he spoke, the listener
gradually grew bewildered by its tone, resembling a tired traveller,
falling little by little unconsciously to sleep as he sits in the murmur
of a mountain stream. And whenever he chose, he could cajole his
hearer, and make him do almost anything whatever, so hard was it to
resist the irresistible persuasion that lurked, like the caressing touch
of a gentle woman's hand, in the tone of that quiet and insinuating
voice.
[Footnote 15: _i.e._ _of extraordinary and surpassing beauty_. Pronounce
Uttirupa.]
[Footnote 16: The Hindoo Aphrodite.]
[Footnote 17: There is here an untranslateable play on _bimba_, the
fruit, (as we say, cherry lip) and _pratibimba_, a reflection in the
water.]
[Footnote 18: All this depends on an elaborate play on the double
meaning of _Smara_, a name for the God of Love, which means _memory_ as
well as _love_.]
And yet, all this beauty was nothing but a mask, and a lie: and so far
from expressing the nature of that soul which it covered and disguised,
it actually added evil to its original defect; and he resembled a
bamboo, looking like a very incarnation of loveliness and symmetry
outside, and singing in the wind, and yet absolutely hollow and without
a heart, within. For from the very moment he was born, he did exactly as
he pleased, and nothing else, being as capricious as the breeze that
blows only as it chooses. For beginning with his parents, nobody ever
crossed him, or placed any obstacle whatever in the path of his desires,
which grew up accordingly like a very rank jungle impervious to the
light, in which his will wandered like a wild young tiger-cub, wayward,
and passionate, and absolutely uncontrolled. And he gave in to others,
and was guided by them, in one point only, and that was in their
extravagant admiration of himself. For finding others worship him, he
fell in with their opinion, and followed their example: and became as it
were the devotee at the shrine of his own beauty, making it a deity to
which every other thing or body was only fitted to be sacrificed. And he
filled his rooms with mirrors of many colours, made of crystal and
lapiz-lazuli, and polished gold and silver, and the water of tanks whose
slabs were of marble of every variety of hue; and he used to sit alone,
when he had nothing else to do, for hours, watching his own image that
seemed to offer him reciprocally worship as he watched it, as if it were
doubtful which of the two, the reality or its reflection, was the deity,
and which the devotee.
And gradually the world with all its objects came to appear in his eyes
as nothing but a playground, and all its men and women merely his own
animated toys. And from being utterly indifferent to everything but his
own momentary pleasure and caprice, he became, little by little, first
callous to the sufferings of others, and finally positively cruel,
finding his amusement in making others victims to his own peremptory
desires. And his appetite, like a fire, grew with the fuel that it fed
upon, till it resembled voracity, and an intolerable thirst for more.
But as long as he remained still a child, the fire, remaining as it were
without its proper aliment, lay hidden: till he grew into a man. And
then, all at once, it blazed out furiously like a very conflagration,
striking terror into all the subjects of the kingdom, and threatening to
consume them all, like forest trees and grass.
For whereas, till then, the fury of his self-will had been scattered,
for want of concentration[19] on one object only, manhood, like a flash
of lightning, suddenly revealed to him that very object, in the form of
woman: and he discovered, in the storm of his delight, that women were
the very victims for whom he had been blindly groping in the darkness
all his life. And he threw himself upon them, like a prey, finding with
intoxication that the Creator had framed him as a weapon constructed
wholly for their destruction. And he said to himself, in triumph: I am,
as it seems, a magnetic gem, omnipotent and irresistible, to whose
attraction the entire sex succumbs inevitably, like grass. And this
opinion was justified by the conduct of the women themselves. For every
woman that set eyes on him, no matter who she was, fell instantly, like
a stone dropped into a well without a bottom, into the abyss of
infatuation, and utterly forgot not only her relations and her home,
but her honour and herself and everything in the three worlds, seized as
it were by the very frenzy of devotion, and anxious only to immolate
herself as a victim on the altar of his divinity. And strange! though he
treated them all as more worthless than grass, throwing them away almost
in the instant that he saw them, not one of them all ever took warning
by the fate of her predecessors: and so far were they from shunning him
as the common enemy of their entire sex, that on the contrary, they
seemed to struggle with one another for the prize of his momentary
affection, the more, the more openly he derided them; as if even his
derision and the cheapness in which he openly held them, increased the
power of his charm. Ha! very wonderful is the contradiction in the heart
of a woman, and bitter the irony of the Creator that fashioned it out of
so curious an antagonism! For she flies to the man who makes light of
her, as if pulled by a cord; while she utterly despises the man who
thinks himself nothing in comparison with her: saying as it were, by her
own behaviour, that she is absolutely worthless in her own esteem.
[Footnote 19: _Yoga._ The germ of truth, and it is a large one, in the
philosophy of _Yoga_ is the doctrine, which is proved by all experience,
that _concentration_ is the secret of mastery.]
IV
So then, after a while, the heart of King Jaya broke within him. For he
became odious in the eyes of all his subjects by reason of the behaviour
of his son, who paid no more regard to his admonitions than a mad
elephant does to a rope of grass. And he died, consumed by the two fires
of a burning fever and a devouring grief: and his wife followed him
through the flames of yet another fire, as if to say: I will die no
other death than his own.
And when the funeral obsequies had been completed, there came a day,
soon after, when Atirupa was sitting in his palace, with some of his
attendants round him, gazing at his own image, that was reflected in a
tiny mirror set on his finger in a ring. And he was plunged in the
contemplation of himself, shadowed by a melancholy that arose, not from
grief at the loss of his parents, but dejection caused by the gloom of
the period of mourning: and as he sat, he said within himself: I am
losing time, and growing old, and letting the opportunity slip by me
unimproved, and this bloom of mine is wasted, and, as it were, lying
idle, for want of its proper mirror, which is not this ring, but a pair
of new eyes, which would look back at my own, not as this does,
vacantly and without a soul, but lit up by the soft lustre of passion
and admiration. And all at once, he started up, and exclaimed aloud:
What! do ye all sit easily, when I am dying for lack of recreation? Know
ye not that even the jackal is in danger, when the lion is left without
a prey? Even now I am debating with myself, whether it would not be a
good thing to have one of you chosen by lot, and trampled by an
elephant, to be a lesson to the rest.
And then, as they all gazed at him with anxiety, each fearing for
himself, he looked at their confusion, as if with enjoyment, and said
again: What, with so many idle all about me, am I, forsooth, to sit
waiting, for fortune to come to me, like an _abhisariká_, of her own
accord? Nay, it were well enough, could I even see coming towards me an
_abhisariká_ of any kind. But the women of this city grow, as it seems,
older and more ugly every day: for I have skimmed its cream, and now
nothing is left but curd, and dregs, and whey, and like the ocean after
its churning, all its treasures are exhausted, leaving nothing but
crocodiles and monsters, and bitterness, and brine.
So then, wishing to cajole him, one of them replied: Maháráj, were this
city as full of beauties as the very sea of gems, how could any one of
them come to thee in broad daylight? For is it not laid down in all the
Shástras, that even an _abhisariká_,[20] were she dying for her lover,
must notwithstanding observe times and seasons, choosing for her
expedition only proper opportunities, such as are afforded by a winter
night, or a dense fog, or the confusion caused by a whirlwind or an
earthquake or an uproar, or a revolution in the state, or an illness of
the king, or a festival, when all the citizens are drunk, or sleeping,
or when the city is on fire. But as it is, not one of these occasions is
present, to enable her to come to thee escaping observation. And a woman
of good family is very different from a dancing girl. For when she
leaves her home, on such an assignation, she wraps herself up,
disguising her identity, and creeps along timidly making herself small,
wishing even darkness darker, in addition to the screen provided by all
the other circumstances that favour her attempt.
[Footnote 20: There is a ludicrous pedantry about the elaborate
categories of Hindoo sages: they make grammatical rules even for every
department of erotics: as if it were necessary for ladies to learn the
grammar of the subject, before they could make love!]
And Atirupa said: There is no difficulty in this: for could I think that
there was even one woman in the city awaiting such an opportunity, who
was worthy of it, I would very soon oblige her, by burning the city to
the ground, reducing it to ashes for her convenience and my own.
And all at once, one answered from behind, who had entered as he spoke,
unobserved: Ha! Maháráj, then, as it seems, I am come in the very nick
of time, to save thy city from such a miserable end.
And Atirupa turned, and exclaimed joyfully: Ha! Chamu,[21] art thou
returned? I was beginning to think thee lost, like a stone dropped to
the very bottom of the sea. And Chamu said: Thou art right: for I am
like the oyster, and contain a pearl.
[Footnote 21: Pronounce Chummoo.]
And he looked at Atirupa, and laughed, rubbing his hands together, with
cunning in his eyes, that resembled those of a weasel. And he said:
Maháráj, as I entered, I heard thee wishing for Shrí[22] to visit thee
in the form of an _abhisariká_; and lo! here she is, in my form. And do
not despise her, on account of my deformity: for Shrí is a lady, and
capricious, and comes in strange disguises. Thou knowest, that the city
being dismal by reason of the obsequies, I seized my opportunity, and
went away on a visit to my maternal uncle, who lives far off in a
village in the wood that lies in the eastern quarter. And on my journey
back, I lost my way in the wood, and went astray: and finally, growing
very tired, I lay down in a thicket. And as I rested, after a while, I
heard voices coming in my direction. And lying hidden, I looked out, and
watched the speakers, till one of them, as I think, caught sight of my
face among the trees, and took fright at its ugliness, and went away
with his companion. And afterwards I rose myself and came away; and now,
here I am.
[Footnote 22: The goddess of Fortune and Beauty. She is the very
incarnation of the _abhisariká_, since she comes of her own accord.]
And Atirupa looked at him, with disappointment: and he said: O Chamu, is
this thy story, and is this all?
And Chamu laughed softly, and he said: Maháráj, he is a sage, who knows
where to stop. But I will have compassion on thy curiosity, and this
much I will tell thee in addition, that one of the speakers was a woman.
And yet I am not sure about it, for if there is another woman like her
in the three worlds, I will cut off my own head, and give to thee as a
footstool, since it is fit for absolutely nothing else. And even as it
is, I think, after all, that I must have fallen asleep in the clump of
bushes, and seen her in a dream: compounding for myself a vision out of
old memories of Apsarases and Yakshinis, and Nágás, and fragments of old
fairy tales and stories that my mother told me long ago, when I was a
child.
And Atirupa looked at him with surprise: and he said: Chamu, this is
very strange, and thou art not like thyself. Hast thou been eating
poppy,[23] or art thou only drunk with wine? For it is no ordinary
vision that could turn thee into a poet. Come now, go on. Describe for
me the beauty that has awoken such emotion in a soul as dull and muddy
as thy own.
[Footnote 23: _Ahiphena_, "snake-foam," said by Udoy Chand Dutt in his
_Materia Medica Indica_ to be derived from the Arabic _afyoon_, as it
was apparently unknown in India before the Musulman invasion.]
And Chamu said: O Maháráj, who can describe the indescribable? There are
things that cannot be described, but only seen: hardly even then to be
believed, when gazed at by the eye. Can anything imitate and reproduce
the beauty of the blue lotus, but the pool in which it is reflected? The
wandering wind may carry, like myself, its fragrance to a distance, but
cannot perform the work that belongs only to the mirror of the pool. So
take counsel of the wind, and go thyself, and become the pool.
And Atirupa laughed joyfully, and he exclaimed: O Chamu, thou art
certainly bewitched, and this wood-nymph has cast over thee a spell:
turning thee into a very breeze of sandalwood from Malaya.
And Chamu said: Laugh, Maháráj: and as I told thee it would be, so it
is: thou dost not believe. But when thou hast seen her eyes, and when
thou hast heard her voice, and when thou hast gazed at her, as I did,
coming straight towards thee, walking, thou wilt laugh no longer: for
the scorn incarnate in the pride of her great breast will make thee
giddy, and the roundness of her hips will steal thy heart and burn it to
a cinder, and the jingle of her anklets will haunt thy ears, as it does
mine, like the sound of a stream, keeping time to the dance of her two
little feet as they come towards thee, till thou wilt find thyself
wishing that some strange magic might keep on drawing thee back for
ever, so only that thou couldst go on gazing, as she kept on coming,
like an everlasting incarnation of the rapture of anticipation of
touching and caressing what it maddens thee to see. Maháráj, I tell
thee, that were the three great worlds but one colossal oyster shell,
she is its very pearl. And like a cunning diver, I have been down into
the sea, and seen it, and now I can take thee where it is, to see it for
thyself. And as I think, thou wilt discover, she is a quarry to thy
taste, who will save thee from the necessity of seeking for others in
the ashes of thy town.
II
THE THIRST OF AN ANTELOPE
I
_Gazelle, gazelle, dost understand
Why the old skulls grin in this silent land?_
My feet are fleet, and I drink at will,
There is something blue in the distance still.
II
_But the old skulls grin in the silent waste,
Gazelle, gazelle, make haste, make haste!_
I travel fast, and I fear no ill,
There is something blue in the distance still.
III
_The old skulls grinned in the silent sand,
They beckoned her like a bony hand:
Gazelle, gazelle, hast drunk thy fill?
Is there something blue in the distance, still?_
KURANGÍ.
I
A DAPPLED DAWN
I
A DAPPLED DAWN
I
Now in the meanwhile Bimba, when his cousin drove him off his throne,
had fled away to the eastern quarter, taking his daughter with him. And
he took up his home in the forest, and there he lived, in a little hut
on the side of a hill, just where the desert ended, and the trees of the
wood began, having fallen from the state of a King to that of a fugitive
and a hunter, living by the chase and the fruits of the forest trees,
and drinking streams instead of wine. And so he continued to live, year
by year, mourning for his wife, and bitterly hating his cousin,
disgusted with the world, with no companion but his daughter. And
gradually, as time went on, he utterly forgot his kingdom and all his
former life, growing ever fonder of the forest that he lived in, and
saying to himself: Now is the wood become my wife, since my other wife
is gone.[24] And the only thing that matters now is the daughter that
she left behind, as if to keep my memory green of what she was herself.
So now, then, I will change her name, lest some day in the future it
should betray her to my cousin: for her name would be a clue, leading to
her destruction. And as a rule, to lose a name is the same thing as to
disappear, and die, and be forgotten. So she shall die, as Alipriyá, to
be reborn as Aranyání. And what does the title matter? For the bees will
love her just as well, by one name as the other.[25]
[Footnote 24: An untranslateable play on _darí_, wood, and _sundarí_, a
beautiful woman.]
[Footnote 25: _Alipriyá_, "beloved of the bees," a name of the trumpet
flower, _Bignonia suaveolens_. _Aranyání_, a forest goddess, nymph, or
dryad. Pronounce Urrun-nyání.]