In many respects Vyas Shastree was a remarkable man, and, very
deservedly, he was held in great respect throughout the country. No one
could look on him without being conscious of his extreme good breeding
and intellectuality. Well made, there was no appearance of great
strength, though in the town gymnasium, as a youth, he had held his
own among the wrestlers, and had even been famous as a sword-player.
Those were troubled times, when a knowledge of weapons was needed by
all men, and even peaceful merchants and priests did not neglect the
use of them; but, as he grew older, the Shastree had laid aside these
exercises, and spare, strong, muscular arms were perhaps the only
evidence of them that remained. Certainly the head and face were fine.
The forehead was high and broad, slightly wrinkled now, and furrowed
by parallel lines. The head was shaved, except the lock behind, and
its intellectual organs were prominent. The eyebrows, strongly marked,
but not bushy, projected boldly over expressive eyes of a deep steel
grey, which were very bright and clear, and a prominent nose of Roman
character, which corresponded with a well-shaped mouth and chin.
Certainly it was a handsome face--pale, sallow perhaps in colour,
yet healthy, and which occasionally assumed a noble and even haughty
expression; but, ordinarily, it was good-humoured: and evidently
elevated and purified in character by intellectual pursuits.
The Shastree was a man of note, as we have said, as to learning and
accomplishments. He was a profound Sanscrit scholar; and in law,
grammar, and logic, with the deep metaphysics of the Védas, and their
commentators, he had few superiors. With mathematics and astronomy
to calculate eclipses and positions of planets, he had sufficient
acquaintance to assist an old friend, who was infirm, in the
arrangement of the "Tooljapoor Almanac," a task by no means easy, as
it included calculation of the eclipses of the year, and astrological
tables. Of the popular Poorans he had less knowledge, or perhaps did
not believe them; and, as many do now in these later days, held more to
the ancient Vedantic theism than to the modern idolatry of the Pooranic
worship. The Shastree, as a devout Brahmun, had made pilgrimages, being
accompanied by his wife; and in disputations at Benares, Nuddea in
Bengal, and Gya--as well as at Madura and Conjevaram, in the south of
India--had gained credit, if not renown.
In lighter accomplishments, too, such as music, he had a fair amount of
knowledge, and sang sweetly the various Rāgs, Droopuds, and other
measures of the classic styles. He considered, perhaps, ordinary songs
below notice; yet when he relaxed, and was prevailed upon to sing some
of the plaintive ballads of his own Mahratta country, to his own Vina
accompaniment, or any of his own compositions, the effect was very
charming. Tara had been carefully taught by him, and the neighbours
often listened to her sweet voice in the morning and evening hymns, and
chants of the service, in the little temple of the house. Yet with all
this wealth, which he shared liberally with the poor--all this worldly
good and honour--Vyas Shastree had two great cares which pressed upon
him heavily, and were shared by his wife. The first was that he had
no son; the second, that his beautiful daughter was already a virgin
widow. And these were heavy griefs.
Anunda Bye had borne him two sons and a daughter, of which Tara was
the first-born. The others had followed, and had died successively
when giving promise of healthy childhood. In vain had the parents
made pilgrimages to the shrines in the Dekhan after the death of the
last son, and to Benares also, to propitiate Siva in his holiest of
temples, and had from time to time remitted propitiatory gifts to his
shrine--no further offspring followed. An heir was not only desirable
for the property, which, in default of one, must devolve upon a very
distant relative--but, in a higher degree, for the performance of those
ceremonies for himself and his family after death, which could only be
effectual from a son, real or adopted.
Often had Anunda urged him to marry again, and assured him of her
love and protection to a young wife, as a mother or elder sister;
and she had even named several parties of good family who would have
considered an alliance with the Shastree a positive honour. Why should
he not marry? He was yet comparatively young: men older than himself
had married twice, nay thrice, or till the object of their desire was
accomplished. Why should he not do the same? Was he too old at forty,
nay, even less? So urged his wife and his best friends.
Yet the Shastree had not consented. The fact was, he loved Anunda very
dearly; she had been a good and true wife to him. He feared, too, a
certain imperious tone of temper which he could control, but which, in
contact with a second and younger wife, might change to jealousy, and
become, to say the least, inconvenient. Or, if he made new connections,
there would be the usual tribe of new relations to provide for, or to
trouble him with importunate demands. On the whole, it might be better
to adopt a son of that distant cousin who lived at Nassuk, and bring
him up as his own. In any form, his necessity was urgent, and Anunda
grew more and more earnest about the matter, and had even induced Tara
to join in it.
"If you had a son," she would say to her husband, "he would be a young
man before you were old. Even if you died, the property would descend
to him, and the ceremonies would be properly performed. If you grew
old, and I were with you, he would take care of us and of Tara. Who
will do this now?"
Yes, the echo in his heart was sad enough. Who would do so? There
might be two widows, perhaps, mother and daughter, both left to the
mercies of distant relatives who had no personal knowledge of them,
and to whom they would be as ordinary widows only, no matter what
amount of property they had brought with them--shaven, dressed in the
coarsest and scantiest raiment, and used for menial offices--perhaps
worse. Yes! the echo--"who would do so?"--often as the words were
said, fell heavily on the Shastree's heart; and recently he had told
his wife that--"he would think about it if his life were spared
for another year; until after the next unfavourable conjunction of
planets"--"he would think about it;" and so Anunda, without making
any formal propositions, was yet collecting information as to the
appearance, character, property, and accomplishments of many girls in
the neighbourhood, and, in short, wherever she had any acquaintance.
Most heavily, however, of all domestic cares did the situation of
his daughter oppress the Shastree. She was growing very beautiful;
in his eyes supremely so. So kind, too, so loving, so thoughtful, so
unselfish, so clever a scholar! She might have been a happy wife--ere
this, perhaps, a happy mother--yet at sixteen she was a widow, with a
gloomy future: not felt as yet; for the girl had grown up with him, had
shared in his studies, and had in all respects so entirely enjoyed her
young and peaceful life, that any thought of change had never occurred
to her.
She had been married at an early age, according to the custom of her
sect--when, indeed, she was little more than six years old--to a youth,
the son of a friend, who was one of the chief priests of the temple of
Punderpoor, a lucrative office, and one which would devolve upon his
son by hereditary right. The family was opulent, and the young man gave
promise of learning and of character. No matter now; he was dead. Three
years after the marriage he had been cut off suddenly by a fever, to
the grief of his family and to the extinction of the Shastree's hopes
for his daughter. Since then, with no further worldly hope before her,
Tara had betaken herself to the study of the holy books in which her
father delighted; and, doomed as it were to a life of celibacy, had
vowed it to the performance of religious exercises after the manner of
her faith.
It was unusual then, that Brahmun girls were taught to read or
write--more so than it is now; and in accordance with the rules of
the sect and the customs of the country, Tara, had her husband lived,
would ere now have joined him, and become mistress of his household--a
sufficient distinction for a Brahmun girl; but before that event, the
application of the child to such rudimental teaching as her father had
given her was so remarkable, that in process of years the conventional
rules of the caste had been set aside, and it was a loving and grateful
task to the father to lead his widowed daughter through the difficult
mazes of Sanscrit lore, and find in hers an intellect and comprehension
little short of his own.
Many of his friends shrugged their shoulders at this strange innovation
of ordinary custom, and argued astutely, that it was a dangerous
thing to fill a girl's mind with learning. Others, his enemies, were
loud in their condemnation of the precedent it would afford to many,
and the bad uses it could be put to; and in disputes upon the subject,
texts were hurled at the Shastree by angry parties, to be answered,
however, by appeals to ancient times, as illustrated in holy books,
when women were deep scholars and emulated the men; and so Tara's
desultory education went on. "After all, what does it matter?" said her
father very frequently, if hard pressed by caste clamour; "she does not
belong to the world now: God has seen it good to cut off her hopes:
she has devoted herself to a religious life, and I am teaching her and
preparing her for it."
But this did not satisfy the adverse Pundits, still less the fact that
Tara as yet wore ordinary clothes, and her head as yet had not been
shaved. The degradation of Brahmun widowhood had not been put on her;
and she was too beautiful to escape notice, or the envious comments of
others, both male and female. The rites of widowhood must be performed
some time or other. Her father and mother both knew that; they would
have to take her to Punderpoor, or to Benares, or to Nassuk, or other
holy city, and after ceremonials of purification, all that beautiful
hair must be cut off and burned, the pretty chaste bodice discarded,
and she must be wrapped, ever after, in a coarse white cotton--or
silk--or woollen--sheet, and all other dresses of every kind or colour
be unknown to her.
Ah! it seemed cruel to disfigure that sweet face which they had looked
upon since she was a child, and had watched in all its growing beauty!
Any other less pure, less powerful parents, would long ago have been
obliged to comply with those cruel customs; and were they not performed
every day at the temple itself? "Why should the rite be delayed?" said
many; "the girl is too handsome; she will be a scandal to the caste.
The excuses of going to Benares, or to Nassuk, are mere devices to gain
time, and sinful." "The matter must be noticed to the Shastree himself,
and he must be publicly urged and warned to remove the scandal from his
house and from the sect, which had been growing worse day by day for
the last three years."
Yes, it was true--quite true. Tara herself knew it to be true, and
often urged it. What had she before her but a dreary widowhood? Why
should she yet be as one who ostensibly lived in the world, and yet did
not belong to it? For whom was she to dress herself and to braid her
hair every day? For whom deck herself in jewels? She did not remember
her husband so as to regret his memory. She had had no love for him.
Married as a child, she had seen him but a few times afterwards, when
he came to perform needful annual ceremonies in the house, and she had
then looked up to him with awe. He had rarely spoken to her, for she
was still a child when he died. Once she remembered, when he was on a
visit, her father had made her recite Sanscrit verses to him, and read
and expound portions of the Bhugwat Geeta, and had said in joke that
she would be a better Pundit than he was.
She remembered this incident better than any other, and soon after its
occurrence he had died. Now she felt that, had he lived, she might
have loved him, and the reproach of widowhood would not have belonged
to her. These thoughts welled up often from her heart with grief, and
yearning only known to herself, and as yet only half admitted: yet
which increased sensibly with time, and recurred, too, more frequently
and painfully, as girls of her own age, honoured wives and happy
mothers--girls who had already taken their places in life--met her at
the temple with laughing crowing children on their hips, proud of their
young maternity: or came to visit her, and spoke of domestic matters
commonly--interests which she could never create or enjoy, and yet for
which the natural yearning was ever present.
"Why did he go from me?" she would cry to herself, often with low
moaning; "why leave me alone? Why did they not make me Sutee with him?
Could I not even now be burned, and go to him?" And if these thoughts
changed, it was to the idea of a new wife for her father, who, perhaps,
would be as a sister. If a brother were born, what a new source of
pleasant care and occupation! Yet this had its dark side also. "Would
she be friendly to her and her mother? and if not----"
Her father and mother observed when gloomy thoughts beset her, and when
she became excitable and nervous in her manner, and they did their best
to cheer them away. "She might yet be happy in doing charitable acts,"
they said, "in reading holy books, in meditation, in pilgrimages; and
they would go with her to Benares and live there." "Why not," the
Shastree would say; "why not, daughter? We have but thee, and thou hast
only us; it will be good to live and die in the holy city."
Well, it sufficed for the time, and there were intervals when people's
tongues were quiet, and these were happy days because so tranquil, and
Tara had given herself and her destiny into her father's hands.
"Do with me as thou wilt, O father," she said; "what is good to thee is
best for me; but do not risk anything of thy honoured name for one so
hopeless as I am. Why should I be a mockery to myself? It may cost me a
pang to part with all these;" and she would pass her hand through those
long, glossy, curling tresses; "and ye too will grieve to see them
gone, and your poor Tara shaved and degraded; but there is no help for
it, and the honour of your house is more to your daughter than these
ornaments. Without them I should be a comfort to ye, and at peace
with the world and with myself; with them, only a source of disgrace
and calumny, and I were better dead. Yes, let us go to Benares, to
Nassuk--anywhere--so that I leave my shame behind me."
If that poor struggling heart were laid open, was there nothing in
its depths which, as she spoke it, combated this resolve fiercely and
unremittingly? If it had not been so, she would have been more than
human. There was the natural repugnant dread of this disfigurement
and disgrace. Worse, far worse, the endurance of the after-life--the
life of childless barren widowhood of which she knew and saw daily
sad examples. She knew of the bitter experience of such widows, when
all modest retirement, respect, and honour of virgin or married life
was discarded with the ceremonial rites, and men's insult and women's
contempt took their place: and that from this there was no refuge till
death.
When she shuddered at these truths--they were no delusions, and her
soul rebelled against them--some ideal being, mingling his life with
hers, caressing the beauty she was conscious of possessing, would
present himself in dreamy visions, waking or sleeping, and beset her
in terribly seductive contrasts. The very books she read offered such
to her imagination. There were no demigods now, no heroes fighting
for the glory of Hinduism, as related in the Ramayun; but there were
ideal examples of nobility--of bravery--of beauty, which enthralled
her fancy, and led it to portray to her realities. Yet there was no
reality, and could be none. She had not seen any one to love, and
never could see any one. Who would care for her--a widow--who could
love a widow? And yet the dreams came nevertheless, and her poor heart
suffered terribly in these contests with its necessity. After all, it
was more the calmness of despair than conviction of higher motive which
brought to her lips words such as we have recorded:--"she would leave
her shame behind her."
But her parents did not go, and the rites were deferred indefinitely.
Last year they were to have gone to Nassuk for the purpose to their
relatives; but the planets were not propitious, or the business of
the temple and its ceremonies interfered. This year, when the cold
season was nearly over, in the spring, at the Bussunt festival, if the
conjunctions were favourable, "they would see about it." They did not
get over the--"if."
So here were the two great cares of the household. Which was the
heaviest? To the Shastree, certainly, Tara's ceremony of widowhood.
His own marriage was a thing which concerned himself only, and, at
the worst, he could adopt an heir; but that Tara should be a reproach
to him, the revered Shastree and priest, and remain a reproach among
women--it could not be. The caste were becoming urgent, and the
Gooroo, or spiritual prince, the "Shunkar Bhartee Swâmi," whose agents
travelled about enforcing discipline and reporting moral and ceremonial
transgressions, sent him word, privately and kindly, that the matter
should not be delayed. He quite approved of the ceremony being
performed at Benares or at Nassuk, out of sight, for the old man knew
Tara--knew her sad history, and admired her learning and perseverance
in study. At his last visit, two years before, he had put up in the
Shastree's house, and had treated the girl as his daughter; but the
requirements of the caste were absolute, and were she his own daughter
he dared not to have hesitated.
But we have made a long digression.
"Come, daughter," said Anunda, "cast that sheet about thy head. It
strikes me that men look at thee too earnestly now as we pass the
bazaar, and the morning air is chill from the night rain."
"Nay, dear mother, not so. Am I a Toorki woman to veil my face?" said
Tara, quickly. "Am I ashamed of it? Art thou, mother?"
"If thou wert not so beautiful, Tara. I dread men's evil eyes on thee,
my child, and I dread men's tongues more."
"Ah, mother! I dread neither," replied the girl. "They have done me
no harm as yet, and if my heart is pure and 'sutee' before God and
the Holy Mother, she will protect me. She has told me so often, and
I believe it. Come--I think--I think," she added, with an excited
manner, as she clasped her heavy gold zone about her waist, her bosom
heaving rapidly beneath the silken folds over it, and her eyes glowing
strangely, "I think, mother, she came to me last night in my dream. She
was very beautiful, O, very beautiful! She took hold of my hair, and
said, 'Serve me, Tara, I will keep it for thee.'"
"Tara! art thou dreaming still?" exclaimed Anunda. "Holy Mother! what
light is in thine eyes? Put the thought far from thee, O dearest; it is
but the echo of what thy father said last night when he comforted us
both--it will pass away."
"Perhaps so, mother," answered the girl, abstractedly. "Yet it seemed
so real, I think I feel the touch on my hair still. I looked at it
when I rose, and combed it out, but I saw nothing. Yes, it will pass
away--everything passes away."
"And what was she like, Tara?" asked her mother, unable to repress her
curiosity.
"O mother, I was almost too dazzled to see. I am even now dazzled, and
if I shut my eyes the vision is there. There!" cried the girl, closing
her eyes and pointing forward, "there, as I saw it! The features are
the same; she is small, shining like silver, and her eyes glowing, but
not with red fire like those in the temple. O mother, she is gone!"
she continued, after a pause, "she is gone, and I cannot describe her."
"Didst thou tell this to him--to thy father, Tara?" asked her mother,
much excited.
"Yes, mother. I awoke before him and could not sleep again. I got
up and drew water for him to bathe. I tended the fire, and sat down
to read. Then he went and bathed; and when he had come out of the
temple[2] and put on dry clothes, I read part of the 'Geeta' to him,
but I was trembling, and he thought I was cold. Gradually I told
him----"
"And what said he, daughter?" asked her mother, interrupting her.
"He seemed troubled, mother, and yet glad, I could not say which. He
said he would ask 'the Mother' after the morning hymn was ended."
"Come then, Tara, we will go to him at once. Nay, girl, as thou art,
thy words have given me strength, my pearl; come."