[Illustration: Frontispiece]
A Draught of the Blue
Together with
An Essence of the Dusk
Translated from the Original Manuscripts
By
F. W. Bain
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY
F. W. BAIN
(For "An Essence of the Dusk")
Published, January, 1907
Reprinted, March, 1907; September, 1908
July, 1910; September, 1911
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
Contents
I A Draught of the Blue
II An Essence of the Dusk
A Draught of the Blue
[Illustration: Hindu script]
Translated from the Original Manuscript
[Illustration: Hindu script]
_Ah! lotus infinite! ah! wild sweet Blue!
Sense, in thy azure ocean dipped, must die._
Desiderio
Introduction
The sun goes down, for those alone, who stand on a revolving sphere:
and so, in Nature's universal life, Death is but a dissolving view, a
word without a meaning: real only to the accidental unit, to whose
local and momentary combination it sets a term. Death is a thing of
nought, phenomenal, kaleidoscopic: a juggle of the Mother of Illusion,
Prakriti or Máyá, whose magic scene not only never dies, but like her
own wild animals, sleeps even with an open eye. You never catch her
napping. And often, when you think that you have done it, she winks at
you, just as it were to show you your mistake. As sometimes, on a hot
midsummer day, when the delicate blue smoke from cottage chimneys rises
straight into the air, and Nature holds her breath: you think, she is
asleep: and all at once, there comes a little whisper, and a ripple
passes over all the golden ears of corn, and in another moment, all is
still. Or on a cliff that overhangs a glassy sea, you lie and dream,
and think, the very water sleeps: and then, a sudden change of colour
flushes the ocean opal for only a single instant, and is gone. Or in a
wood at noon, you listen to the silence, and a rustle suddenly quivers
in the trees, and dies away. Murmurs and echoes: moments and emotions
of the pulses of the world: hints and indications, still, small voices
more significant than storms, of the never-sleeping thrill and throb of
universal action.
"_Every tremor gravitation excites in any planet is immediately
transmitted to the farthest limits of the system, in oscillations
corresponding in their periods with the causes that produce them, like
sympathetic notes in music, or vibrations from the deep tones of an
organ.... The human frame may be regarded as an elastic system, the
different parts of which are capable of receiving the tremors of
elastic media, and of vibrating in unison with their innumerable
undulations._"
So far sober modern science, never dreaming that it is exactly
reproducing (translate the thing only from physics into ethics) the old
Hindoo idea, that moral conservation of energy, whose fundamental axiom
it is, that no ACTION, good or bad, however small, is or ever can be
lost, but like a stone thrown into the water, generates innumerable
consequences, running in all directions to infinity, producing
permanent impressions and effects, that follow and fatally determine,
eternal and indelible, the fortunes of their DOER, through the series
of interminable births and deaths: births that are no beginning, and
deaths that are not an end. Thus do we go on making for ourselves our
weal or woe: and as we go, _the hounds of deeds long buried in oblivion
are on our track_.
Doubtless a little story might have a more delicious name than the one
before us: but doubtless it never had. We may understand it either of
a young woman or the moon: and in either case, it means more things
than one. I. _The new moon, seen for a single instant, in the sky, or
on the lotus, or on the forehead of Maheshwara_. II. _A beauty with
eyes like a great blue lotus, or the colour of heaven_. For all these
things have a quality in common, the mystic blue.
Strange, how deep an impression the colour _blue_ seems to have made
upon the Indian mind. Gods and peacocks, creepers and lotuses, clouds
and pools and skies and seas, elephants and maidens' glances are all
mixed up together in their language by their "participation" in this
"Platonic idea," this transcendental blue. Something of this, indeed,
is readily intelligible in every land: but in India, it is more so.
The blue is bluer, there. _Wouldst the poet understand, Travel in the
poet's land_. I will not say, with Goethe, Kenst thou that land: but
simply tell the reader something that I saw at Mahabaleshwar in 1903.
The month of May, and with it, the hot weather, was drawing to a close.
The woods were green, but very, very dry, and all their ferny fringes
by the red road-sides were parched and powdered thick with ruddy dust.
Each morning, when I stood in my verandah, looking down the valley, I
could see a floor of cloud, now rolled out like a table-cloth, now
tossing like a troubled sea, now floating, wreath on wreath, like a
ballet dancer's gauzy flounces, half opaque and half transparent, over
the distant Konkan, three thousand feet and more below, waiting for the
rising sun to touch it with a rosy blush and kiss it, into
invisibility. And every evening, just as he went away, the hot haze
hanging like a filmy veil about the hills thickened back into solidity,
and beautiful cold mists, reborn, rolled swiftly up the valley,
blotting out the picture, and hiding all with their ghostly shifting
curtain. And so, from morn to night, and night to morning, it went on,
till lines of bullock carts began to gather and wander down the hill,
and people were preparing to pack and flit and vanish: for the monsoon
was approaching, when no one not a native of those parts can remain
upon the hill, unless he wishes to go mad.
And then it began to rain. Suddenly, like the Day of Judgment, there
fell from the sky in a solid lump rain, like no rain that I had ever
seen before, with the roar of an avalanche and the thunder of Indra and
lightning that hissed like a serpent, crashing and smashing down on the
roof as if it would break it in. It was dark at midday, and deadly
cold, for there went up a mist from the earth, to meet the flood from
heaven, making as it were a solid wall through which it was impossible
to see a yard. There was nothing to be done but to sit and wait. So
for five nights and days that angry rain raged and hammered upon the
earth, and tore her with savage fury, growing fiercer as it went on[1]:
till all at once, just as though the gates above had been suddenly
shut, it stopped, as abruptly as it had begun, about five in the
afternoon.
I went out, and wandered slowly up the hill. The air was soft, and
quite warm, and heavy with the smell of smells, the fragrance of fresh
earth. Here and there, the paths were gone, washed clean away, looking
like red skeletons of their former selves, with rock for bones, all
their earthy covering gone. And here and there, a little off the road,
a pale orchid sheltered beneath a bough, or a dainty cobra-lily,
nestling snug under an overhanging trunk, peeped with incomparable shy
reserve through some dark vista in the trees. A mongoose ran across
the road, stopped, just half-way, to stare for an instant at me with
its startled weasel eye, and leaped into cover on the opposite side.[2]
In a few minutes I gained a point of view, and turned to look,--over a
sea of green, and what a green!
For every leaf on every tree was washed and wet, and glistened as if
coated with fresh paint. The rich glow of a yellow evening sun
deepened and intensified the wonderful red colour of patches of naked
rock, raw scars laid bare by little slips of land on places on the
hill. Cascades of water shot spouting and splashing into the valleys
from innumerable scarps and shelves along the heights; and as I
listened, I could hear the streams, hidden in the dense foliage,
rushing and gurgling down the steep slopes, carrying with them as they
went all the loose soil and pebbles they could find. And all along the
ridges of the hills, to right and left, on Elphinstone and Lodwick
points, hung brooding enormous masses of white cloud, the purest, the
strangest, the most indescribably magnificent and beautiful clouds that
I ever saw, whiter than snow, brighter than polished silver, save only
where their lower edges were charged with heavy rain, fleeces of
colossal milk-white rams, dipped by the master painter, Deity, in giant
vats of purple ink. Down and away below them the staircase of the
Ghauts, long lines of broken hill, were stepping away into the plain,
with every distant detail sharp and clear, cut as it were in copper,
till all merged in the far horizon, on which a _blink_ of burnished
gold flashed back from the unseen sea, lying right in the eye of the
setting sun. I listened, and in the silence, broken only by the ruckle
of the rushing water, somewhere away upon the hill, I heard a cock
crow. And at that moment, right above me, I looked and saw: a mass of
shining cloud swung slowly open, and through the gap, in the deep abyss
of heaven, appeared a spot, a panel, a little lozenge, of blue: pure,
unsullied, silent, elemental, Indian blue.
There, there, was the unearthly colour, the colour of the mystic lotus,
and the long-eyed languishing Indian Gods. I knew in that instant what
Kalidas meant, when he compared the virtue of the just to a patch of
heaven fallen down to earth, the blue celestial leaven in this world of
frenzied storm and weeping rain. There was the azure paradox, the blue
that is all but black, dark, transparent, clear as crystal, shut out
from eyes that live in plains by earth's encircling fog. But _over
every mountain is peace_, and the kosmic blue.
MAHABALESHWAR,
_April, 1905._
[1] In but a part of the last night, there fell eight inches and a half
of rain! Time for time, Mahabaleshwar can probably laugh at
Cherrapunji. The valleys are scooped out as if with a trowel.
[2] This mongoose was, no doubt, wondering "what the devil I did
there": for during the rains he and his fellows have the hillsides
entirely to themselves.
Contents
PROLOGUE--A DEAD LOTUS
LOVE'S LOOKING-GLASS
I. Sky-Crystal
II. Sprung from the Mud
III. Purusha and Prakriti
IV. Bubbles
V. A Painted Lady
VI. Shadows
VII. Twilight
VIII. Quintessence
IX. Echoes and Regrets
EPILOGUE--THE BREAK OF A HEART
_Note_.--The words below the Vignette may be thus translated:
_Earth, the Root, and Heaven, the Hue;
Marsh of Mire, and Flower of Blue;_
Prologue
A Dead Lotus
A Dead Lotus
I
_To the pitchy dark of that awful wood,[1] where plunging Ganges lost
her way through a night of a thousand years: when the lonely Moon
turned ashy pale, mocked by a million moons that danced in the hollows
of the rushing waves: we bow._
On the edge of the great southern forest, there lived, a thousand years
ago, an aged King and Queen, who counted all the world as grass, for
want of a son and heir. And finding all other methods fruitless, in
the end they gave themselves wholly up to meditating, night and day, on
the sole of the Great God's foot: until at last Maheshwara felt pity
for that childless couple, and revealed himself to them both at once,
in a double dream. So when he asked them what they wanted, the King
asked simply for a son. But the Queen, being smitten with deep
devotion at the sight of the Great God's moonlit hair, exclaimed: O
Boon Giver, let my son resemble thee, were it only in a single fraction
of an atom of his being. Touch me now with the very end of one of thy
tangled locks of hair, and so shall I become instinct with a tiny
portion of thy divinity. Then said Shiwa to himself: Even a single jot
of me will be much too powerful for the rest of this human being's
substance, and disturb the balance of the whole. But be it as this
mother wills. For she has made her choice, and I granted the boon
beforehand.[2] And I can see that he has to dree the weird[3] of his
former births.
Then he took from his head a single hair, and broke it off, and placed
it in her hand. And then he disappeared, and that royal pair awoke,
and eagerly compared their dreams, which corresponded in every
particular. And when they looked, lo! shut fast in the hand of the
Queen was a single hair, that glowed like a wire of flame.[4]
Then full of joy, they worshipped the God: and they placed that hair in
a golden shrine, and built around it a temple. And when in course of
time the Queen gave birth to a son, they called him by a suitable name,
Rudrálaka.[5] And as the baby became a child, he did not belie his
name. For his thick dark hair was shot with a tinge of gleaming red,
and in the sun it shone like fire, and it resembled the mane of a
horse. And as the boy became a man, his strength became prodigious;
and his passions were wild and furious and proportioned to his
strength. And he was as unruly and unmanageable as a young colt of
high spirit, and so full of wayward obstinacy and headstrong self-will,
that his father said in private to his mother: Now, but that the hair
in thy hand was red, this son of thine would seem to take after, not
the Great God himself, but his bull.[6]
And when his manhood was complete, like a river in flood in the rainy
season, it overflowed all common bounds. And he ran wild among men and
women, overcoming all the men in every feat of strength and agility,
and like a great black bee in a flower garden, rifling all the women of
their honey and their hearts and their good behaviour, and playing
havoc among them, till the mischief created by his own red hair began,
as it were, to turn that of his father and mother white. Then they
said: Come, we will marry him, and then no doubt he will settle down
and become clear, like strong wine after fermentation, and turn into a
pillar of his family and the state. But as soon as they proposed it,
Rudrálaka laughed in their faces. And he exclaimed: Who carries a
flower, when it is faded, and what are women but flowers, fit only to
be gathered, in the moment of their bloom, and worn for an hour and
thrown away? And he is wise, who knows how to get from the bee its
honey, and yet elude its sting. Now a maiden is all honey, but a wife
is a buzzing sting. Moreover, women are like mountains, and like
snakes, and fire, and the mirage, beautiful in the distance, and the
further off, the better: and like them, rugged, and biting, and
burning, and luring to destruction all who come too near. But of all
things this is worst, that every woman wishes, like a king, to reign
alone, and is utterly unable to endure the very name of rival, even in
her dreams: so that every husband has in his wife, either a despotic
tyrant, or an exasperated foe, whom nothing can appease or soothe but
absolute submission. And thus his life is sapped and sucked and drawn
into the being of his wife, till it wholly disappears, like that of a
noble tree, embraced and treacherously kissed into a premature decay by
a beautiful and clinging creeper. And no matter how glorious the
flower, I will not be the tree: nor would I buy a wife, were she ten
thousand times more beautiful than Rádhá, by the slavery even of a
single day. And what is the need to pay so dear for things that are
always ready to give themselves away for nothing, and would rather give
themselves away than be bought at any price? For women are always
longing to give themselves away, and care only for men that they do not
know: being forgetful of all kindness, and unbound by obligation, and
seeing in their husband nothing but his faults; while every passing
stranger has their heart, as soon as he appears, just as long as he is
strange. For Love is himself a stranger, and cannot become familiar
without ceasing to be Love: and women live for Love alone, being, like
flowers, nothing but his instruments: and he is like the amber, and
they are like the grass.
So when they found that, in spite of all that they could say, he would
not be persuaded, but that the more they tried, the harder grew his
obstinacy, his parents gave it up. And soon afterwards, their hearts
broke with grief, and they died, leaving him unmarried, and fearing for
him, and the kingdom, and their ancestors, and themselves, lest all
should go to ruin by reason of the incorrigible perversity of this
cutter of their race's stalk.[7]
And then, just as though he had only waited for their death, no sooner
had his two parents gone away on the great road, than this
marriage-hating son of theirs went hunting in the forest. And he rode
a horse of spirit like his own, which after a while broke from control
and fled at full speed, carrying him in an instant out of sight of all
his attendants. And it brought him, deep in the heart of the wood, to
his destiny, in the form of a woman, the daughter of an old ascetic,
whose beauty, like a deadly snake, bit and slew, in a single moment,
his antipathy to the state of marriage, by the poison of its childlike
charm. And utterly beside himself, he wooed her then and there, and
brought her home on his own horse, and made her his wife and Queen.
And she changed him so completely, that he to whom a wife was slavery,
became a woman's willing slave: so much so, that he could not bear to
let her out of his sight even for a single instant. And he became,
like an image of Arddhanári,[8] inseparable from his wife, holding her
in his arms night and day, and chafing, like a wild animal kept without
food in a cage, if she left him only to drink water. And the God of
the flowery bow laughed, to see his infatuation; and he said softly to
himself: A converted scoffer is, after all, the best adorer: for even a
very clever swan would fail to separate this milk-and-water.[9] But the
King's subjects were overjoyed; and they said: Now, then, his parents
will be happy. And if his passion is so violent, that at present he
utterly neglects his kingly duties, no matter. For when it has become
cool, he will be the very crest-jewel of his race.
And then, while he was entirely bewitched and enthralled by his passion
for his new young moon of a bride, some neighbouring kings, his
hereditary enemies, hearing of his condition, and seizing their
opportunity, combined together, and attacked him. And after a while,
his subjects on the frontier, being ruined, paid no taxes. So driven
by necessity, he said to his wife, with a sigh: There is no help for
it, and now I must absolutely leave thee for a little while, to pull
these thorns up by the roots: for if not, the kingdom will be
destroyed. Yet only for a very little while: for I will return almost
before I have started. And collecting his army, he put himself at its
head, and threw himself upon those kings, and scattered them like
leaves in a storm of wind, and reduced them to beg for mercy: for he
was beside himself with rage, seeing in them not so much enemies of his
kingdom as causes of his unwilling separation from his wife. And
having speedily gained his object, he sent relays of horses, and posted
them at intervals all the way from his camp to his capital. And then
at last, one morning, he mounted a horse, and started with but one
attendant, and a heart on fire, to return to his wife.
So they rode, all day long, at full speed: stopping only as long as was
necessary to let them leap from one horse to another, as if wishing to
rival the sun in his course; till that unhappy companion of the King
was almost dead from fatigue, for he was not supported like his master
by the burning desire to arrive. But the King rode on as it were in a
dream, seeing nothing before him but the edge of the far horizon, and
the image of his wife beyond. And so the day went by, and as the sun
was going down, they drew near to the capital, and saw its walls before
them, away on the distant plain. And the King uttered a shout, and he
drove his spurs deep into the flanks of his flying horse, and left his
follower far behind. And he rode into the city like a whirlwind, and
dashed through its streets, scattering the people, and spurning them as
it were from his horse's hoofs. And he reached his palace, and rode
through the gates into the court, and threw himself to the ground. And
he stood on the palace steps, and called aloud with a joyous voice: Ho!
go quickly, and tell the Queen that the King has come, and waits only
for her permission, to kneel at her lotus-feet.
Then the guards, who stood around, gazed at the King and at each other,
in silence and dismay. And as they waited, there came to the King an
old chamberlain, who stood before him with joined hands, and stooping;
and his face was grey with fear. And he said, with a shaking voice:
Let the King show mercy. Has he not met the couriers? The Queen died
of a burning fever, only three days ago.
And the King fell to the earth, as though one had struck him on the
head with an iron club.
[1] The hair of Shiwa, who caught the Ganges as it fell from heaven
upon his head. It took the river a thousand years to find its way out.
[2] [Greek: Theus anaitíos, aitía d' heloménou.]
[3] I must ask the reader to excuse me for using a Scottish expression,
for there is no English equivalent. It means to work out the fate that
is laid upon him by what has been done in a previous existence.
[4] The English reader should know, not only that the Great God's hair
is red or tawny, but that he has in his nature a strain of wildness,
something on the border-land of insanity.
[5] _The hair_, or _the abode, of Shiwa_.
[6] Nandi, whose hair is white.
[7] Because, as Lucian said, without an heir to perform the due
ceremonies, the unfortunate shades would have to go hungry and thirsty.
[8] Shiwa and Párwatí combined.
[9] _Kshira nira, milk-and-water_, is a technical term in Hindoo
erotics for a very close embrace. The swan is credited by Hindoo poets
with the power of separating the two: a curious idea, of which it is
not easy to see the origin.
II
And they took him up, and carried him in, and laid him on a bed. And
there he remained, like a dead man, and for so long, that they begun to
doubt whether he were not dead indeed. But at last, the physicians by
their remedies brought him back to the body. But his reason had fled.
For he raved and fought, struggling with the strength of a giant, and
biting like a wild beast, tearing his own hair, and shouting for his
wife. And he threw himself upon his attendants, and handled them so
that they feared for their lives: and he ran through the palace hunting
for his wife, and calling her by name. And when he could not find her,
he fell on all whom he met, and beat them, and came so near to killing
many, that at last his ministers took counsel, and caused him to be
bound. So after raging for many days, taking neither food nor drink,
he fell into a burning fever, as if he wished to follow his wife by the
very road she went herself; and he lay for many weeks on the very
threshold of the door of death. But his strength was such that he
could not die. And so, after a long while, he came back, very slowly,
and as it were against his will, to life and to himself: and little by
little recovered health, and took once more to his kingly duties, and
the bearing of the burden of the state. But it was, as if his better
part had died, refusing to be parted from his wife, in the other world,
and leaving behind in this only so much of his soul as was necessary to
enable him to live at all. For he never moved from his palace, roaming
about its rooms, always silent, and always alone, with his head sunk
down upon his breast, and his sad eyes fixed upon the ground: and over
his dark face there never passed the whiteness of a smile: for his dead
wife's shadow lay across it, and her figure moved before him night and
day; and her sweetness, not to be forgotten, and never to return,
rankled in his heart like a thorn, and goaded it, and gnawed it, and
festered in his soul: and sleep forsook his eyes, which were wild, and
haggard, and such that all who saw them feared him, and were wary in
his presence: for every now and then he broke out into paroxysms of
grief mixed with laughter, during which he seemed, as it were, not to
know what he was doing, and was as dangerous to approach as a wild
mother elephant robbed by hunters of her calf. And so he lived, and
months went by, and the grey hairs came before their time and settled
in his head, and sowed as it were its fire with the ashes of grey
grief: and age saw her opportunity, and began unheeded and unhindered
to furrow wrinkles in his brow, and dig deep corners at the ends of his
stern shut lips.
III
Now it happened, on a day, when the Great God was roaming through the
sky with Umá in his arms, that they passed close by the moon. And
suddenly, they heard in the stillness a mournful voice, like the note
of a _chakrawákí_ bewailing her lost mate, exclaiming at intervals:
Alas! alas! So they stopped and alighted on the surface of the
cold-rayed orb, and wandered about in his camphored air, guided by the
sound, till they came all at once upon a Siddhá.[1] And she was
sitting under a sandal tree, leaning her head against the trunk, with
large tears in her great blue eyes, and a cloud of dark dishevelled
hair floating about her bare white bosom, whose two colossal pearls
rose and fell, heaving and fretting as if regretting their absent ocean
home. Then filled with compassion and curiosity, Umá exclaimed: What
can be the meaning of this sighing Siddhá? And Maheshwara divined the
truth. But he said: Ask her. Thereupon Párwatí said: O thou lotus
lady, what is thy trouble? And the Siddhá said: O Daughter of the
Mountain, I have attained, by superfluity of merit, to this position of
a Siddhá, which notwithstanding is only a grief and no pleasure to me.
For I remember my former birth, and I can see my husband, sorrowing for
my absence away below. And now I would give all that remains of my
unexhausted stock of accumulated merit for a single moment of the time
that is past, did it last no longer than the twinkling of an eye. For
what is the use of my Siddháhood, or anything else, without my lord?
Or why am I cursed with reminiscence, and not rather rewarded with
oblivion? For memory binds my soul, and links it like a red hot chain
to the burning fire of a dead delight.
Then Párwatí said in private to the God: Canst thou not do something
for this lovely Siddhá? And Maheshwara replied: This is the nature of
women, that for the sake of their single lover, they would annihilate
the three worlds. But what has pity to do with the constitution of the
universe? Or how can time return again, and all be thrown into
confusion, simply to allow two foolish lovers to meet once more? So
there is nothing whatever to be done. But Párwatí coaxed him and
cajoled him, knowing the power of her two white arms, until at last he
said: Since I can refuse thee nothing, and thou art absolutely set upon
it, I will, to please thee, cause these two unhappy persons to re-enact
their little drama, and taste again the nectar of that love which they
so much regret: but only in a dream. For dreams were established by
the Creator for this very reason, that a remedy might be found for the
irrevocable nature of reality. For that must be as it has been, and
cannot be recalled or changed: but anything may happen in a dream. And
yet, this pair of lovers would be wiser, were they content to let
alone, and leave things as they are. For they will but make their
misery more, by the very means they wish to take to lessen and remove
it. But be that as it may.
And then, he cast upon the Siddhá a kindly glance. And he said: Silly
child, that wouldst be wiser than those who framed the three great
worlds, be now consoled. Thou shalt, at least, have thy way, for a
little while, and meet the lord of thy heart again, halfway between
heaven and earth.
And hearing this, the Siddhá fell before him, and took his foot, and
kissed it, and placed it in her bosom. And she said: O saviour of the
shipwrecked that are sinking in the waves of time, O send me thy
succour soon, for I am like one dying of thirst in the desert for the
blue water of my husband's arms.
[1] The moon, according to some philosophers, is the home of those
_pure spirits_, who have purged themselves in former births
sufficiently to deserve a certain grade of beatitude or bliss.
IV
And at that very moment, the King her husband on the earth was sitting
in his palace hall, musing on her memory, and dreaming of the past, and
listening to the musicians, playing before him as he sat. So as they
played, as luck would have it, they fell upon an air, which ran into
his heart, and pierced it like a poisoned needle: for it was the
favourite air of his vanished Queen. And as he listened, the tears
came rushing into his eyes, blinding them with love-longing and the
blackness of despair. And he started up, and called aloud, in a voice
of thunder: Away! begone! Wretches, have ye conspired together to
break my heart in two? And instantly, those unlucky players stopped
affrighted, and fled before his wrath like hares. And as all shrank
before him, the domestic chaplain came forward, and said politely: O
King, without are waiting certain merchants, jewellers, who have come
here by appointment, to lay their jewels at thy feet.
Then the King said, with a sigh: What are all their gems to me? And
yet, no matter: let them all come in.
So in came all the merchants, and showed the King each what he had.
And the King went up and down, saying sadly to himself: Now every
pleasure is a pain, and every joy, a grief. For what are jewels to me,
now that she is no more, on whom I would have hung them till she sank
beneath their weight? And then, as if in irony, he took the jewels and
began to put them on himself. And taking from the merchants all they
had, he hung himself all over, loading himself with gorgeous gems, with
emeralds and rubies, and pearls and amethysts and diamonds, and
sapphires, and every other stone, till he flashed as it were with a
thousand hues, and resembled an incarnation of the spoiling of the sea.
So as he went from one merchant to another, adding to his store, he
came suddenly on an old merchant, who stood a little apart from the
rest, with nothing visible to sell. And his head was of enormous size,
and bare,[1] and bald on the top, and from its sides long thick white
hair ran down over his shoulders, and mingled with his beard. And his
face was wrinkled all over, like the skin of a withered fruit. And the
King stopped and considered him, amazed at the extraordinary size of
his head, which resembled a monstrous gourd. And then he said: Ha!
merchant: thou art idle. Where are thy valuables, and what is thy
commodity? Doubtless that must be a treasure, which thou keepest
wrapped away so carefully from common eyes. But come, produce it: that
I may add it to all these. Then said the merchant: All these are well
enough: and yet, the thing that I have brought the King is more than
all together, and yet again, less than the least. Then the King said:
Of what, then, art thou a seller? And the merchant said: O King, I am
a seller of dreams.
And the King looked at him awhile, and was seized with sudden laughter.
And he exclaimed: What is this, and who ever heard of a seller of
dreams? Art thou mad, or art thou only an old buffoon? Then that old
merchant fixed his eyes upon the King. And he said:
O King, who can tell, whether he is mad or not? But as for me, know,
that mine are no common dreams, but they are such as many would give
all they had, and more than all they had, to dream. For I can make the
past present, and I can find that which is lost, and join together whom
time has parted, and turn regret to laughing joy: and I can mend the
broken-hearted, and bring love's fierce emotion back, and into faded
flowers of passion I can breathe again their old sweet bloom, and make
to echo in living ears the music of lips that have long been dead.
And as he spoke, the King stood, and his heart rose up into his mouth.
For the words of the old merchant played on it, as if it were a lute,
and tugged at it like a cord; and the memory of his wife surged
suddenly in his soul, and swept it like a wind. And all at once, he
seized that old man by the throat, with hands that trembled with the
ecstasy of rage, and shook him like a leaf. And his voice faltered
with passion, as he said: Old fool, dost thou mock me? Dost thou
promise, without performing? Beware! for thou art playing with a fire
that will shrivel thee like a blade of grass.
Then said the old merchant, with laughter in his wrinkled eyes: O King,
thou art a child, not recognising thy physician, and seeking a quarrel
with the only one who can give thee a medicine suited to thy case. For
I am a physician, not of the body, but of the soul. So now, tell me:
wilt thou buy from me a dream, or not? And the King looked at him for
a moment; and he drew a long breath, and the tears stood in his eyes.
And he said: Sell me indeed a dream, such as I wish, and thou hast
described, and I tell thee this, that I will not haggle with thee over
the price. Then the old man laughed softly, and he said: Maháráj, who
ever speaks of the price, before he has seen and tried the goods?
First, thou shalt have thy dream; and as to the price, we will leave
it: and thou thyself shalt name it, at the end. For maybe, didst thou
know the price, thou wouldst hesitate to buy at all.
Then he put his hand into his breast, and drew out a little flask. And
he held that little crystal flask up in the air, looking for a ray of
light. And when he could not find one, that old man muttered under his
breath: Sun, sun, send me a ray. And at that very moment, there shot
into the room a ray of light, right on the little flask. And then that
old man said: O King, see! this is a little of the very essence of the
nectar of the cold-rayed moon, where I have been this morning, to fetch
it from that lord of herbs. And the King looked, and lo! there danced
in that little flask a liquor that laughed and bubbled, and its deep
blue was exactly the same as the colour of his dead wife's eyes. And
like them, it smiled at him, changing from hue to hue, till it seemed
to him that those very eyes were looking straight into his own, out of
the little flask. And quickly he put out his hand, and snatched it,
and took the stopper from its mouth. And there came from it a perfume
that carried to his nostrils the scent of his dead wife's hair. And
his brain reeled, and he put it hastily to his lips, to drink. And as
he did so, suddenly there came into his head a thought. And he paused
in the very act, looking at that old merchant, out of the corner of his
eye. And he said to himself: Ha! What if this old seeming merchant
were an emissary of those foes of mine, whom I defeated, to give me a
deadly draught? Or even so, what matter? Let me drink quickly, the
more poisonous, the better. For life without her will not be worse,
even when turned to death.
And then, at a single gulp, he drank the contents of the flask. And
instantly, he sank back, and lay on the cushions on which he fell,
buried in a magic sleep.
But as soon as he saw that the King slept, that old merchant stooped
down, and squatted quickly on the floor, with his two hands grounded
between his feet, and his knees reaching to his ears. And there he
remained, with closed eyes, couched in the pitcher posture like a
lonely, water-watching crane, and still, as if he had been painted on
the wall.
[1] _I.e._ he had no turban on. In the East, on entering a house the
head remains covered; it is the shoes which are removed.
Love's Looking-Glass
Love's Looking-Glass
I
SKY-CRYSTAL
But the King's soul rose out of his body, like a snake escaping from
its slough. And he hovered for only a single instant, over that empty
shell of him, lying, loaded with priceless gems, on the floor below,
and then shot up into the blue sky, like a flame parted from its wick.
And as he flew like a thought through space, going like the wind he
knew not where, the King said to himself: Ha! so then, I was not
deceived. Certainly, that old impostor was not a merchant, but a
secret agent of my foes, and now I am dead, beyond a doubt. And that
delicious poison was as speedy as it was beautiful and sweet. And now
I can say farewell to life without regret. And yet I should like to
know, where in the world I can be going.
So as he floated in the air, bathed in unutterable peace, there came
over his mounting soul a feeling of supreme disdain and loathing for
his body that was lying down below. And he said to himself, as he
closed his eyes: Ah! joy, for I have left behind that wretched sheath,
with all its poor surroundings and its miserable mundane ties. I have
emerged, as it were, from a charnel ground, and surely that divine
liquor was, as that old vendor said, a very potent essence of nectar
and celestial wine, mixed of the icy camphor and the oozy juices of the
moon.[1] For I feel like one intoxicated, and I swim, as it were, in
perfume, whose pungent and excessive sweetness almost robs me of my
giddied sense; and I lie on the azure ether as if on a silken couch,
poised as it were between earth and heaven, and yet I seem to soar like
some earth-despising spirit-roamer in the sky.
Then after a while, he opened his eyes, and looked round, and saw
himself alone in the vault of space, surrounded by the stars. And he
was rushing like a comet[2] through the mansions of the moon, and he
saw Chitrá, and Swáti, and Rohini and the Hunter,[3] and the rest, and
far in the north, the polar star. And he looked down on the Seven
Rishis,[4] and saw, far below him, the icy summits of the Snowy
Mountain, with the yellow digit of the moon clinging to the peak of
Kailas, like the earth of old on the horn of the holy Boar.[5]
And then suddenly, memory pierced him like a needle. And he cried out:
Alas! I am still alone, and in this respect, even death has brought no
change. And what then is the use of death, if it does not restore me
to my wife? And what is the use of this rushing speed? For I am
hurrying, against my will, into the very zenith of infinite space.
And even as he spoke, he stopped, and hung in the air like a fleck of
cloud. And strange! as if the very thought had produced her, suddenly
he found his wife in his arms. And as her own arms glided around his
neck, and her bosom beat against his own, his hair stood on end with
amazement and delight. And he heard the beating of his own heart,
throbbing like thunder through the realms of space. And just as he was
going to speak, she stopped his mouth by kissing him with soft lips
opening into a smile, and eyes that reflected the colour of the sky.
And she said: Quick, let us lose no time. Then he said: Ah! couldst
thou die, leaving me without thee in that hell below? Then she said
again: How can mortals disobey, when destiny decrees? It was from
necessity that I left thee, and not from choice. But let us quickly
make the most of a little time, granted only by the favour of the God
who has the moon in his hair, and destined to end and disappear almost
as soon as it has begun. Dost thou remember how we met, and saw each
other first of all, away in the wood below? Come back now once more
with me, and let us live and love again, and taste the nectar of
repetition, before we part to meet no more.
And instantly the King lost his senses, and lay in a dream within a
dream. And as they floated in each other's arms, between the heaven
and the earth, the past rose up out of the dark, before him, spread
like a picture before his eyes and breathed like a tale into his ear.
[1] Three things are essentially associated in Sanskrit poetry with the
moon--icy cold, camphor, and the medicinal virtue of drugs.
[2] _Falling meteors_, says the _Brihat Sanhita_, are the _fruits of
virtue enjoyed in heaven dropping in visible form_.
[3] Orion.
[4] The Great Bear.
[5] Wishnu, who in his third incarnation became a boar to support the
earth: _jaya jagadisha hare!_
II
SPRUNG FROM THE MUD
And once again, he rode through the forest at headlong speed, and the
trees flew by him like frightened shadows, while his horse ran on, and
carried him swiftly whither it would, into the forest depths. And then
at last, it stopped short, on the very edge of a great river, close to
an aged banyan tree, whose hanging roots dropped from the branches to
the ground, and with their network almost hid a little ruined shrine,
whose roof their pillars pierced and split, and whose steps ran down
into the stream beneath their sacred shade, where the quiet water was
littered thick with lotus flowers and floating withered leaves. And
there he fell from his horse's back and threw himself upon the ground:
and he and his horse together slaked their intolerable thirst, with
neither eyes nor ears for aught, till they had drunk their fill. And
then, with a wisp of leaves and grass, he began to wipe the foam and
sweat from the quivering limbs of that noble horse, dearer to him, till
that very moment, than anything else on earth.
So as he stood, wholly intent on his horse and his work, he heard
behind him a little rustle, and a low cry. And he looked round. And
in that instant, like a flash of lightning, he utterly forgot his
horse, and himself, and everything else in the three worlds.
For there, standing a little way off, under that old root-dropping fig,
was one who resembled the guardian spirit of that virgin forest's
enchanted beauty, caught in the very act of changing into a feminine
form, and leaving him in doubt as he gazed, whether she was a woman or
a tree, or a being mixed of both. For the coarse red bark that clothed
her left bare her arms and feet, which were shaped like those of Hari's
darling,[1] and it cased and swathed her soft round limbs, allowing
them to escape, like the calyx of a new young flower, or a rough hard
husk on the very point of bursting open, by reason of the ripeness of
the tempting fruit of womanhood, hardly to be held within. And a spray
of blue convolvulus[2] hung twining all about her, trailing like a
creeper from her hair, which was twisted up into a great dark knot on
the very top of her pretty head, and hung there like a purple bank of
thunder-cloud, out of whose shadow her great blue eyes looked round as
the moon with wonder at the thing they saw before them. And her chin
was very pointed, shaped like a _pippal_ leaf, and over it the
mind-born god had set the seal of his bow in her face, black in the
twin-arch of her brow, and red in her juicy _bimbá_ lips. And
astonishment flushed her cheeks, like fruits, with a spot of damask
blush, like bloom. And a single lotus, red as blood, nestled in the
little hollow dip between the mounds of her rising breasts, upland
hills where the robber Love lay lurking, to spoil the traveller of his
heart. And the sweeping curve of her heavy hips stole the eyes of the
King away from her slender clasp-inviting waist, till it came to an end
in the nook of her inward-bending knee. And her left hand rested
gently on a pillar of the tree, while her right was stretched before
her, bending back, palm upwards, with all its fingers spread, till the
tip of its forefinger just touched her lower lip. And Love fished for
the King's soul with her lovely wrist and arm, and took it in their
net. And she was standing bolt upright, poised like a flower on her
left foot's toes, with her right foot just behind it, exactly like a
graceful fawn suddenly frozen into stone when running at its utmost
speed by the sight of danger in its path. For she stood absolutely
still, save that the lotus on her breast was lifted quickly up and down
by the flutter of the maiden-wave on which it swam.
So they two stood, still as death, each thunderstruck by the other's
vision, like a panther and its prey.[3] And then at last, after a time
that seemed to each in spite of its length but a single instant, for
each was lost in the other, standing on the threshold of Love's
dream-bower where years are moments and time lies dead, she spoke, and
broke the spell. And she said, softly: It is a man. Surely, thou art
a man? And the King said, with a smile: O maid, what else? Then she
said again: And thy companion, what is he? And the King said: He is a
horse. Then she clapped her hands together, and exclaimed, as she held
them joined: Ah! stand still a little longer, and let me watch both him
and thee. For I have never seen before, either a horse or a man. So
he stood still as she desired; and as she watched him, he watched her.
And her blue eyes rested on him, and entered into his soul, and shook
it so, that he began to tremble all over with the horror of extreme
delight. And he said to himself: I too, I too, see a woman, for the
very first time in all my life; which, till this very moment, has been
wasted and empty and worthless, and contemptible and without a point.
Ha! I am like a dark black night, that has suddenly been flooded with
the rapture of a golden sun. O hail! O bright great God, in the form
of that blue-eyed beautiful thing before me, that fills me with
astonishment and laughter and supreme delight. And presently he said:
O thou with the blue flowers in thy hair and the blue wonder in thy
enormous eyes, that resemble those of a child, how can it be that in a
world so full of them, thou shouldst never yet have set those eyes on
either a man or a horse?
Then she started as if from a dream. And she came up close to him, and
raised her hand, as though she would touch his arm: and barely touched
it, with a touch like that of a leaf, which struck the King like a
heavy blow. And she said, looking up at him, doubtfully: But O thou
great, beautiful, deep-voiced man, how should I see either? For out of
this wood I never was, and into it nothing ever comes, and in it are
only its own trees, with the flowers, and the river, and the forest
beasts, and my father and myself. Then the King said: Thy father? And
is not he a man? And she said: Nay, if thou art, he is not. For he is
old, very old, and smaller even than myself, and his hair and beard are
thin and white, and his arms and legs are rough as bark, and dry and
thin as sticks. And he sits always stiff and silent, plunged in
meditation, resembling the stump of an ancient tree: and it is the same
as if he were not alive.[4] And if thou wilt, I will show him to thee,
a little way within the wood: and yet, it were better not, for it would
but distract his meditation. But thou art tall and straight and
strong, and glorious, and young like me: and yet far bigger than
myself! for see! how even on tiptoe I reach hardly to thy shoulder.
And thy hair is like the lion's mane, and thou art like him to look at,
and wonderful in every way, and such as I could never have believed.
For often I have thought of men, and wondered what they could be like,
but never dreamed of one like thee. Look only at my hand, and thine,
or at my arm, or foot, and thine, and see how small and weak[5] a thing
I am, compared with thee!
And the King looked at her, as she spoke; and when she ended, he began
to laugh for very joy. And he said: O beautiful little blue-eyed
creature, thou dost not know thy own strength, nor where it lies, but
how as to thy mother? Hadst thou, indeed, a mother, or didst thou not
rather grow, like a flower, out of some forest tree? Then she said:
Nay, I had a mother: but alas! long ago she went away, before I can
remember. For she was a heavenly Apsaras, whom Indra sent down here
below, to tempt my father in this wood, and turn him from his
penance.[6] And she came and stayed with him awhile, and afterwards
she went away, flying up to heaven, and leaving me behind her with my
father in the wood. And the King said: I do not blame thy father: what
wonder, indeed, if she overcame his resolution, did she resemble her
future daughter, even a very little? And thy words require no other
witness to their truth, except thyself. For beyond a doubt thou art
the very daughter of an Apsaras. Then she said: And hast thou ever
seen an Apsaras? And the King laughed, and he said: Nay, not until
this moment. But come now, let me only tether my horse to yonder tree,
and then, if thou wilt, we will sit and talk together. And I will be
thy playfellow, and will tell thee things that thou dost not know, and
thou shall tell me of nothing but thyself.