44. It then thinks itself to be fully developed in the womb, as a man

dreams of a fairy form in his sleep, and believes this illusion as a

reality.

45. He then views the outer world, where he is born to die, just as one

visits a land where he is destined to meet his death; and there remains

to relish its enjoyments, as prepared for him.

46. But the spiritual man soon perceives every thing as pure vacuum,

and that his own body and this world are but illusions and vain

vacuities.

47. He perceives the gods, and human habitations, the hills and the

heavens resplendent with the sun and stars, to be no more than abodes

of disease and debility, decay and ultimate death and destruction.

48. He sees nothing but a sad change in the natures of things, and all

that is movable or immovable, great or small, together with the seas,

hills and rivers and peoples of this earth and the days and nights, are

all subject to decay sooner or later.

49. The knowledge that I am born here of this father, and that this is

my mother, these my treasures, and such are my hopes and expectations,

is as false as empty air.

50. That these are my merits and these my demerits, and these the

desires that I had at heart; that I was a boy and am now young; are the

airy thoughts of the hollow mind.

51. This world resembles a forest, where every being is like a detached

arbor; the sable clouds are its leaves, and the stars its full blown

flowers.

52. The walking men are as its restless deer, and the aerial gods and

demons its birds of the air; the broad day light is the flying dust of

its flowers, and the dark night the deep covert of its grove.

53. The seas are like its rills and fountains, and the eight boundary

mountains as its artificial hills; the mind is the great tank in it,

containing the weeds and shrubs of human thoughts in abundance.

54. Wherever a man dies, he is instantly changed to this state, and

views the same things every where; and every one thus rises and falls

incessantly, like the leaves of trees in this forest of the world.

55. Millions of Brahmás, Rudras, Indras, Maruts, Vishnus and Suns,

together with unnumbered mountains and seas, continents and islands,

have appeared and disappeared in the eternal course of the world.

56. Thus no one can count the numbers of beings that have passed away,

are passing and shall have to pass hereafter, nor such as are in

existence and have to become extinct in the unfathomable eternity of

Brahma.

57. Hence it is impossible to comprehend the stupendous fabric of

the universe any how except in the mind, which is as spacious as the

infinite space itself, and as variable as the course of events in the

world.

58. The mind is the vacuous sphere of the intellect, and the infinite

sphere of the intellect, is the seat of the Supreme.

59. Now know the whirlpool and waves of the sea to be of the same

element, as the sea in which they rise and fall, though they are

not of the same durable nature as the sea water, by reason of their

evanescence. So the phenomena are the same with the Noumena, though

none of these is a reality.

60. The etherial sphere of heaven, is but a reflexion of the

intellectual sphere of the Divine mind, and the bright orbs of the

firmament, are as gems in the bosom of Brahma. Its concavity is the

cave of the mind of the Eternal One.

61. The world according to the sense in which I take it, as the seat

of God, is highly interesting, but not so in your sense of its being

a sober reality. So the meaning of the words “I and thou,” refers

according to me to the intellectual spirit, and according to you to the

living soul and body.

62. Hence Lílá and Sarasvatí, being in their vacuous intellectual

bodies, were led by the pure desire of their souls, to every place

without any obstruction or interruption.

63. The intellectual spirit has the power, to present itself wherever

it likes, on earth or in the sky, and before objects known or unknown

and wished to be known by it. It was by this power that they could

enter into the tent of the prince.

64. The intellect has its way to all places and things, over which

it exercises its powers of observation, reflection and reasoning to

their full extent. This is known as the spiritual and unconfined body

(Átiváhika), whose course cannot be obstructed by any restriction

whatever.

CHAPTER XLI.

DISCRIMINATION OF ERROR.

Vasishtha said:—Upon the entrance of the ladies in the tent, it

appeared as a bed of lotuses; and its white vault, seemed as graceful

as the vault of heaven with two moons rising at once under it.

2. A pure and cooling fragrance spread about it, as if wafted by the

breeze from the Mandara flowers; and lulled the prince to sleep, with

every body lying in their camps.

3. It made the place as pleasant as the garden of Eden (Nandana), and

healed all the pains and cares of the people there. It seemed as a

vernal garden, filled with the fragrance of the fresh blown lotuses in

the morning.

4. The cooling and moon-bright radiance of the ladies, roused the

prince from his sleep, as if he was sprinkled over with the juice of

ambrosia.

5. He beheld upon his rising the forms of two fairies (apsarás), seated

on two stools, and appearing as two moons risen on two pinnacles of the

mount Meru.

6. The prince beheld them with wonder, and after being composed in his

mind, he rose up from his bed, as the god Vishnu rises from his bed of

the serpent.

7. Then advancing respectfully to them, with long strings of flowers in

his hands, he made offerings of them to the ladies, with handfuls of

flowers flung at their feet.

8. Leaving his pillowed sofa in the midst of the hall, he sat with his

folded legs on the ground; and lowly bending his head, he addressed

them saying:—

9. Be victorious, O moon-bright goddesses! that drive away all the

miseries and evils and pains and pangs of life, by your radiance, and

dispellest all my inward and outward darkness by your sunlike beams.

10. Saying so he poured handfuls of flowers on their feet, as the trees

on the bank of a lake, drop down their flowers on the lotuses growing

in it.

11. Then the goddess desiring to unfold the pedigree of the prince,

inspired his minister, who was lying by, to relate it to Lílá.

12. He upon waking, saw the nymphs manifest before him, and advancing

lowly before them, threw handfuls of flowers upon their feet.

13. The goddess said:—Let us know, O prince! who you are and when and

of whom you are born herein. Hearing these words of the goddess, the

minister spake saying:—

14. It is by your favour, O gracious goddesses! that I am empowered to

give a relation of my prince’s genealogy to your benign graces.

15. There was a sovereign, born of the imperial line of Ixaku, by name

of Mukunda-ratha, who had subjugated the earth under his arms.

16. He had a moon-faced son by name of Bhadraratha; whose son

Viswaratha was father to the renowned prince Brihadratha.

17. His son Sindhuratha was the father of Sailaratha, and his son

Kámaratha was father of Maháratha.

18. His son Vishnuratha was father of Nabhoratha, who gave birth to

this my lord of handsome appearance.

19. He is renowned as Vidúratha, and is born with the great virtues

of his sire, as the moon was produced of the milky ocean, to shed his

ambrosial beams over his people.

20. He was begotten by his mother Sumitrá, as the god Guha of Gauri;

and was installed in the realm at the tenth year of his age, owing to

his father’s betaking himself to asceticism.

21. He has been ruling the realm since that time with justice; and your

appearance here to night, betokens the blossoming of his good fortune.

22. O goddesses! whose presence is hard to be had, even by the merit of

long devotion, and a hundred austerities, you see here the lord of the

earth-famed Vidúratha, present before you.

23. He is highly blessed to-day by your favour. After saying these

words, the minister remained silent with the lord of the earth.

24. They were sitting on the ground with their folded legs (padmásana),

and clasped hands (kritánjali), and downcast looks; when the goddess

of wisdom told the prince, to remember his former births, by her

inspiration.

25. So saying, she touched his head with her hand, and immediately the

dark veil of illusion and oblivion was dispersed from over the lotus of

his mind.

26. It opened as a blossom by the touch of the genius of intelligence,

and became as bright as the clear firmament, with the rays of his

former reminiscence.

27. He remembered by his intelligence his former kingdom, of which he

had been the sole lord, and recollected all his past sports with Lílá.

28. He was led away by the thoughts of the events of his past lives, as

one is carried away by the current of waves, and reflected in himself,

this world to be a magic sea of illusion.

29. He said: I have come to know this by the favour of the goddesses,

but how is it that so many events have occurred to me in course of one

day after my death.

30. Here I have passed full seventy years of my lifetime, and recollect

to have done many works, and remember also to have seen my grand-sire.

31. I recollect the bygone days of my boyhood and youth, and I remember

well all the friends and relatives and all the apparels and suite, that

I had before.

32. The goddess replied:—Know O king! that after the fit of

insensibility attending on your death was over, your soul continued

to remain in the vacuum of the same place, of which you are still a

resident.

33. This royal pavilion, where you think yourself to abide, is situated

in the vacuous space, within the house of the Bráhman in that hilly

district.

34. It is inside that house that you see the appearances of your other

abodes present before you: and it was in that Bráhmana’s house, that

you devoted your life to my worship.

35. It is the shrine within the very house and on the same spot, that

contains the whole world which you are seeing all about you.

36. This abode of yours is situated in the same place, and within the

clear firmament of your mind.

37. It is a false notion of your mind, which you have gained by your

habitual mode of thinking, that you are born in your present state, of

the race of Ixáku.

38. It is mere imagination, which has made you to suppose yourself

to be named so and so, and that such and such persons were your

progenitors, and that you had been a boy of ten years.

39. That your father became an ascetic in the woods, and left you

in the government of the realm. And that you have subjugated many

countries under your dominion, and are now reigning as the lord

paramount over them.

40. And that you are ruling on earth with these ministers and officers

of yours, and are observant of the sacrificial rites, and a just ruler

of your subjects.

41. You think that you have passed seventy years of your life, and that

you are now beset by very formidable enemies.

42. And that having waged a furious battle, you have returned to this

abode of yours, where you are now seated and intend to adore the

goddesses, that have become your guests herein.

43. You are thinking that these goddesses will bless you with your

desired object, because one of them has given you the power of

recollecting the events of your former births.

44. That these goddesses have opened your understanding like the

blossom of a lotus, and that you have the prospect of getting your

riddance from all doubts.

45. That you are now at peace and rest, and enjoy the solace of your

solity; and that your long continued error (of this world), is now

removed for ever.

46. You remember the many acts and enjoyments of your past life, in

the body of prince Padma, before you were snatched away by the hand of

death.

47. You now perceive in your mind, that your present life is but a

shadow of the former, as it is the same wave, that carries one onward,

by its rise and fall.

48. The incessant current of the mind flows as the stream of a river,

and leads a man, like a weed, from one whirlpool into another.

49. The course of life now runs singly as in dreaming, and now

conjointly with the body as in the waking state, both of which leave

their traces in the mind, at the hour of death.

50. The sun of the intellect being hid under the mist of ignorance,

there arises this network of the erroneous world, which makes a moment

appear as a period of hundred years.

51. Our lives and deaths are mere phantoms of imagination, as we

imagine houses and towers in aerial castles and icebergs.

52. The world is an illusion, like the delusion of moving banks and

trees to a passenger in a vessel on water, or a rapid vehicle on land;

or as the trembling of a mountain or quaking of the earth, to one

affected by a convulsive disease.

53. As one sees extraordinary things in his dream, such as the

decapitation of his own head; so he views the illusions of the world,

which can hardly be true.

54. In reality you were neither born nor dead at any time or place;

but ever remain as pure intelligence in your own tranquility of soul.

55. You seem to see all things about you, but you see nothing real in

them; it is your all seeing soul, that sees every thing in itself.

56. The soul shines as a brilliant gem by its own light, and nothing

that appears beside it, as this earth or yourself or any thing else, is

a reality.

57. These hills and cities, these people and things, and ourselves

also, are all unreal and mere phantoms, appearing in the hollow vault

of the Bráhmana of the hilly district.

58. The kingdom of Lílá’s husband, was but a picture of this earth, and

his palace with all its grandeur, is contained in the sphere of the

same hollow shrine.

59. The known world is contained in the vacuous sphere of that shrine,

and it is in one corner of this mundane habitation, that all of us

here, are situated.

60. The sphere of this vaulted shrine, is as clear as vacuity itself,

which has no earth nor habitation in it.

61. It is without any forest, hill, sea or river, and yet all beings

are found to rove about in this empty and homeless abode (_i.e._ in the

Divine Mind).

62. Here there are no kings, nor their retinue, nor any thing that they

have on earth. Vidúratha asked:—If it is so, then tell me goddess! how

I happened to have these dependants here?

63. A man is rich in his own mind and spirit, and is it not so ordained

by the Divine mind and spirit also? If not, then the world must appear

as a mere dream, and all these men and things are but creatures of our

dreams.

64. Tell me goddess, what things are spiritually true and false, and

how are we to distinguish the one from the other.

65. Sarasvatí answered:—Know prince that, those who have known

the only knowable one, and are assimilated to the nature of pure

understanding, view nothing as real in the world, except the vacuous

intellect within themselves.

66. The misconception of the serpent in a rope being removed, the

fallacy of the rope is removed also; so the unreality of the world

being known, the error of its existence, also ceases to exist.

67. Knowing the falsity of water in the mirage, no one thirsts after

it any more, so knowing the falsehood of dreams, no one thinks himself

dead as he had dreamt. The fear of dreaming death may overtake the

dying, but it can never assail the living in his dream.

68. He whose soul is enlightened with the clear light of the autumnal

moon of his pure intellect, is never misled to believe his own

existence or that of others, by the false application of the terms _I_,

_thou_, _this_ &c.

69. As the sage was sermonizing in this manner, the day departed to its

evening service with the setting sun. The assembly broke with mutual

greetings to perform their ablutions, and it met again with the rising

sun, after dispersion of the gloom of night.

CHAPTER XLII.

PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMING. SWAPNAM OR SOMNUM.

The man who is devoid of understanding, ignorant and unacquainted with

the All-pervading principle, thinks the unreal world as real, and as

compact as adamant.

2. As a child is not freed from his fear of ghosts until his death; so

the ignorant man never gets rid of his fallacy of the reality of the

unreal world, as long as he lives.

3. As the solar heat causes the error of water in the mirage to the

deer and unwary people, so the unreal world appears as real to the

ignorant part of mankind.

4. As the false dream of one’s death, appears to be true in the

dreaming state, so the false world seems to be a field of action and

gain to the deluded man.

5. As one not knowing what is gold, views a golden bracelet as a mere

bracelet, and not as gold (_i.e._ who takes the form and not the

substance for reality); so are the ignorant ever misled by formal

appearances, without a knowledge of the causal element.

6. As the ignorant view a city, a house, a hill and an elephant, as

they are presented before him; so the visibles are all taken only as

they are seen, and not what they really are.

7. As strings of pearls are seen in the sunny sky, and various paints

and taints in the plumage of the peacock; so the phenomenal world,

presents its false appearances for sober realities.

8. Know life as a long sleep, and the world with myself and thyself,

are the visions of its dream; we see many other persons in this sleepy

dream, none of whom is real, as you will now learn from me.

9. There is but one All-pervading, quiet, and spiritually substantial

reality. It is of the form of unintelligible intellect, and an immense

outspreading vacuity.

10. It is omnipotent, and all in all by itself, and is of the form as

it manifests itself everywhere.

11. Hence the citizens that you see in this visionary city, are but

transient forms of men, presented in your dream by that Omnipotent

Being.

12. The mind of the viewer, remains in its self-same state amidst the

sphere of his dreams, and represents the images thought of by itself

in that visionary sphere of mankind. (So the Divine Mind presents its

various images to the sight of men in this visionary sphere of the

world, which has nothing substantial in it).

13. The knowing mind has the same knowledge of things, both in

its waking as well as dreaming states; and it is by an act of the

percipient mind, that this knowledge is imprinted as true in the

conscious souls of men.

14. Ráma said:—If the persons seen in the dream are unreal, then tell

me sir, what is that fault in the embodied soul, which makes them

appear as realities.

15. Vasishtha replied:—The cities and houses, which are seen in dreams

are in reality nothing. It is only the illusion (máyá) of the embodied

soul, which makes them appear as true like those seen in the waking

state, in this visionary world.

16. I will tell you in proof of this, that in the beginning of creation

the self-born Brahmá himself, had the notions of all created things, in

the form of visionary appearances, as in a dream and their subsequent

development, by the will of the creator; hence their creator is as

unreal as their notions and appearances in the dream.

17. Learn then this truth of me, that this world is a dream, and that

you and all other men have your sleeping dreams, contained in your

waking dreams of this visionary world. (_i.e._ The one is a night dream

and the other a day dream, and equally untrue in their substance).

18. If the scenes that are seen in your sleeping dream, have no reality

in them, how then can you expect those in your day dreams to be real at

all?

19. As you take me for a reality, so do I also take you and all other

things for realities likewise, and such is the case with every body in

this world of dreams.

20. As I appear an entity to you in this world of lengthened dreams; so

you too appear an actual entity to me; and so it is with all in their

protracted dreaming.

21. Ráma asked:—If both these states of dreaming are alike, then tell

me, why the dreamer in sleep, does not upon his waking, think the

visions in his dream, to be as real as those of his day dreaming state?

22. Vasishtha replied:—Yes, the day dreaming is of the same nature as

night dreams, in which the dreamt objects appear to be real; but it is

upon the waking from the one, as upon the death of the day dreamer,

that both these visions are found to vanish in empty air.

23. As the objects of your night dreams do not subsist in time or

place upon your waking, so also those of your day dream, can have no

subsistence upon death.

24. Thus is every thing unreal, which appears real for the present, and

it disappears into an airy nothing at last, though it might appear as

charming as a fairy form in the dream.

25. There is one Intelligence that fills all space, and appears as

every thing both within and without every body; It is only by our

illusive conception of it, that we take it in different lights.

26. As one picks up a jewel he happens to meet with in a treasure

house, so do we lay hold on any thing, with which the vast Intellect is

filled according to our own liking. (Here we find the free agency of

human will).

27. The goddess of intelligence, having thus caused the germ of true

knowledge, to sprout forth in the mind of the prince, by sprinkling the

ambrosial drops of her wisdom over it, thus spake to him in the end:—

28. I have told you all this for the sake of Lílá, and now, good

prince, we shall take leave of you, and these illusory scenes of the

world.

29. Vasishtha said:—The intelligent prince, being thus gently

addressed by the goddess of wisdom, besought her in a submissive tone.

30. Vidúratha said:—Your visit, O most bounteous goddess, cannot go

for nothing, when we poor mortals cannot withhold our bounty from our

suppliant visitants.

31. I will quit this body to repair to another world, as one passes

from one chain of dreams into another.

32. Look upon me, thy suppliant, with kindness, and deign to confer

the favour I ask of thee; because the great never disdain to grant the

prayers of their suppliants.

33. Ordain that this virgin daughter of my minister, may accompany me

to the region, where I shall be led, that we may have spiritual joy in

each other’s company hereafter.

34. Sarasvatí said:—Go now prince to the former palace of your past

life, and there reign without fear, in the enjoyment of true pleasure.

Know prince, that our visits never fail to fulfil the best wishes of

our supplicants.

CHAPTER XLIII.

BURNING OF THE CITY.

The goddess added:—Know further, O prince! that you are destined to

fall in this great battle, and will have your former realm, presented

to you in the same manner as before.

2. Your minister and his maiden daughter will accompany you to your

former city, and you shall enter your lifeless corpse, lying in state

in the palace.

3. We shall fly there as winds before you, and you will follow us

accompanied by the minister and his virgin daughter as one returning to

his native country.

4. Your courses thereto will be as slow or swift as those of horses,

elephants, asses, or camels, but our course is quite different from any

of these.

5. As the prince and the goddess were going on with this sweet

conversation, there arrived a man on horse back before them in great

hurry and confusion.

6. He said:—Lord! I come to tell that, there are showers of darts and

disks, and swords and clubs, falling upon us as rain, from the hostile

forces, and they have been forcing upon us as a flood on all sides.

7. They have been raining their heavy weapons upon us at pleasure, like

fragments of rocks hurled down from the heads of high hills, by the

impetuous gusts of a hurricane.

8. There they have set fire to our rock-like city, which like a wild

fire, is raging on all sides. It is burning and ravaging with _chat

chat_ sounds, and hurling the houses with a hideous noise.

9. The smoke rising as heaving hills, have overspread the skies like

diluvian clouds; and the flame of fire, ascending on high, resembles

the phœnix flying in the sky.

10. Vasishtha said:—As the royal marshal was delivering with

trepidation this unpleasant intelligence, there arose a loud cry

without, filling the sky with its uproar (hallahalloo-kolá halam).

11. The twanging (tankára) of bow strings drawn to the ears, the

rustling (sarsara) of flying arrows flung with full force; the loud

roaring (bringhana) of furious elephants, and the shrieks (chitkára) of

frightened ones.

12. The gorgeous elephants bursting in the city with a clattering

(chatchata) sound; and the high halloos (halahala) of citizens, whose

houses have been burnt down on the ground:—(Here dagdhadára _Arabic_

daghdaghad-dár, means both a burnt house and also a burnt wife).

13. The falling and flying of burnt embers with a crackling noise

(tankára); and the burning of raging fire with a hoarse sound

(dhaghdhaga _Arabic_ daghdagha, _Bengali_ dhakdhak):—

14. All these were heard and seen by the goddesses and the prince and

his minister, from an opening of the tent; and the city was found to be

in a blaze in the darkness of the night.

15. It was as the conflagration or fiery ocean of the last day, and the

city was covered by clouds of the hostile army, with their flashing

weapons, waving on all sides.

16. The flame rose as high as the sky, melted down big edifices like

hills by the all dissolving fire of destruction.

17. Bodies of thick clouds roared on high, and threatened the people,

like the clamour (kala-kala) of the gangs of stout robbers, that were

gathered on the ground for plunder and booty.

18. The heavens were hidden under clouds of smoke, rolling as the

shades of Pushkara and Ávarta, and the flames of fire, were flashing,

like the golden peaks of Meru.

19. Burning cinders and sparks of fire, were glittering like meteors

and stars in the sky; and the blazing houses and towers glared as

burning mountains in the midst.

20. The relics of the forces were beset by the spreading flames of

clouds of fire, and the half burnt citizens (with their bitter cries),

were kept from flight, for fear of the threatening enemy abroad.

21. Sleets of arrowy sparks flying in the air on all sides, and showers

of weapons falling in every way, burnt and pierced the citizens in

large numbers.

22. The greatest and most expert champions, were crashed under the feet

of elephants in fighting; and the roads were heaped with treasures,

wrested from the robbers in their retreat.

23. There were wailings of men and women at the falling of fire-brands

upon them; and the splitting of splinters and the slitting of timbers

emitted a _phat-phat_ noise all around.

24. Big blocks of burning wood were blown up, blazing as burning suns

in the air; and heaps of embers filled the face of the earth with

living fire.

25. The cracking of combustible woods and the bursting of burning

bamboos, the cries of the parched brutes and the howling of the

soldiers, re-echoed in the air.

26. The flaming fire was quenched after consuming the royalty to ashes,

and the devouring flame ceased after it had reduced everything to

cinders.

27. The sudden outbreak of the fire was as the outburst of house

breaking robbers upon the sleeping inhabitants; and it made its prey of

everything (whether living or lifeless), that fell in its way.

28. At this moment the prince Vidúratha heard a voice, proceeding from

his soldiers, at the sight of their wives flying from the scorching

flames.

29. Oh! the high winds, that have blown the flames to the tops of our

household trees, with their rustling sound (kharakhara) and hindered

our taking shelter under their cooling umbrage.

30. Woe for the burning of our wives, who were as cold as frost to our

bodies before (by their assuaging the smart of every pain); and whose

ashes now rest in our breasts, like the lime of shells, _i.e._ in the

sublimated state of spiritual bodies (súkshma-dehas).

31. Oh! the mighty power of fire, that has set to flame the forelocks

of our fair damsels, and is burning the braids of their hair, like

blades of grass or straws.

32. The curling smoke is ascending on high, like a whirling and long

meandering river in the air, and the black and white fumes of fire,

resemble the dark stream of Yamuná in one place, and the milky path of

the etherial Gangá in another.

33. Streams of smoke bearing the brands of fire on high, dazzled the

sight of the charioteers of heaven by their bubbling sparks.

34. There are our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, relations and

suckling babes, all burnt alive in the livid flames; and here are we

burning in grief for them in these houses, which have been spared by

the devouring fire.

35. Lo! there the howling fire is fast stretching to these abodes, and

here the cinders are falling as thick as the frost of Meru.

36. Behold the direful darts and missiles dropping down as the driving

rain, and penetrating the windows, like bodies of gnats in the shade of

evening.

37. The flashing spears and flaming fire, flaring above the watery

ocean of the sky, resemble the submarine fire ascending to heaven.

38. The smoke is rising in clouds, and the flames are tapering in the

form of towers, and all that was humid and verdant, is sucked and dried

up, as the hearts of the dispassionate.

39. The trees are broken down by the raging element, like posts

of enraged elephants; and they are falling with a cracking noise

(kata-kata), as if they were screaking at their fall.

40. The trees in the orchards, now flourishing in their luxuriance

of fruits and flowers, are left bare by the burning fire, like

householders bereft of their properties.

41. Boys abandoned by their parents in the darkness of the night, were

either pierced by flying arrows or crushed under the falling houses, in

their flight through the streets.

42. The elephants posted at the front of the army, got frightened at

the flying embers driven by the winds, and fled with loud screaming at

the fall of the burning houses upon them.

43. Oh! the pain of being put to the sword, is not more grievous, than

that of being burnt by the fire, or smashed under the stones of the

thundering engine.

44. The streets are filled with domestic animals and cattle of all

kinds, that are let loose from their folds and stalls, to raise their

commingled cries like the confused noise of battle in the blocked up

paths.

45. The weeping women were passing as lotus flowers on land, with

their lotus like faces and feet and palms, and drops of tears fell

like fluttering bees from their lotiform eyes and wet apparel upon the

ground.

46. The red taints and spots of _alakávali_, blazed as _asoka_ flowers

upon their foreheads and cheeks.

47. Alack for pity! that the furious flame of fire, should singe the

black bee-like eyelids of our deer-eyed fairies; like the ruthless

victor, that delights in his acts of inhumanity.

48. O the bond of connubial love! that the faithful wife never fails to

follow her burning lord, and cremates herself in the same flame with

him (this shows the practice of concremation to be older than the days

of Válmíki and Viswámitra).

49. The elephant being burnt in his trunk, in breaking the burning

post to which he was tied by the leg, ran with violence to a lake of

lotuses, in which he fell dead. (Here is a play upon the homonymous

word “pushkara,” in its triple sense of a lake, a lotus and the

proboscis of an elephant).

50. The flames of fire flashing like flitting lightnings amidst the

clouds of smoke in the air, were darting the darts of burning coals

like bolts of thunder in showers.

51. Lord! the sparks of fire sparkling amidst the dusky clouds, appear

as glittering gems in the bosom of the airy ocean, and seem by their

twirling to gird the crown of heaven with the girdle of Pleiades.

52. The sky was reddened by the light of the flaming fires, and

appeared as the courtyard of Death dyed with purple hues in joy for

reception of the souls of the dead.

53. Alas! the day and want of manners! that the royal dames are carried

away by these armed ruffians by force. (_O tempores O mores_).

54. Behold them dragged in the streets from their stately edifices, and

strewing their paths with wreaths of flowers torn from their necks;

while their half burnt locks are hanging loosely upon their bare

breasts and bosoms.

55. Lo! their loose raiments uncovering their backs and loins, and the

jewels dropt down, from their wrists, have strewn the ground with gems.

56. Their necklaces are torn and their pearls are scattered about;

their bodies are bared of their bodices, and their breasts appear to

view in their golden hue.

57. Their shrill cries and groans rising above the war cry, choked

their breath and split their sides; and they fell insensible with their

eyes dimmed by ceaseless floods of tears.

58. They fell in a body with their arms twisted about the necks of one

another, and the ends of their cloths tied to each other’s; and in

this way they were dragged by force of the ruffians, with their bodies

mangled in blood.

59. “Ah! who will save them from this state,” cried the royal soldiers,

with their piteous looks on the sad plight of the females and shedding

big drops of their tears like lotuses.

60. The bright face of the sky turned black at the horrible sight, and

it looked with its blue lotus-like eyes of the clouds, on the fair

lotus-like damsels thus scattered on the ground.

61. Thus was the goddess of royal prosperity, decorated as she was with

her waving and pendant locks, her flowing garments, flowery chaplets

and gemming ornaments brought to her end like these ladies, after her

enjoyment of the pleasures of royalty and gratification of all her

desires.

CHAPTER XLIV.

SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF THE VISION.

Vasishtha said:—At this instant the great queen, who was in the bloom

of youthful beauty, entered the camp of Vidúratha, as the goddess of

grace pops upon the lotus flower.

2. She was decorated with pendant wreaths of flowers and necklaces, and

accompanied by a train of her youthful companions and handmaids, all

terrified with fear.

3. With her face as bright as the moon and her form as fair as the

lily, she appeared as a luminary of heaven, with her teeth shining as

sets of stars, and her bosom throbbing with fear.

4. Then the king was informed by one of her companions about the fate

of the warfare, which resembled the onset of demons upon the Apsará

tribe.

5. Lord! this lady, said she, has fled with us from her seraglio, to

take refuge under thy arms, as a tender creeper seeks the shelter of a

tree, from a rude gust of wind.

6. Behold! the ravishers ravishing the wives of the citizens with their

uplifted arms, like the swelling waves of the sea carrying away the

arbours of the bank in their rapid current.

7. The guards of the royal harem are all crushed to death by the

haughty marauders, as the sturdy trees of the forest are broken down by

the furious tornado.

8. Our armies frightened by the enemy from afar, dare not approach the

falling city, as nobody ventures to rescue the lotus beds from a flood,

under the threatening thunders of a rainy night.

9. The hostile force have poured upon the city in terrible numbers, and

having set it on fire, are shouting loudly under the clouds of smoke,

with their weapons brandishing on all sides.

10. The handsome ladies are dragged by the hair from amidst their

families, in the manner of screaming cranes, caught and carried away by

the cruel fowlers and fishermen.

11. Now we have brought this exuberant tender creeper to thee, that

thou mayst save her from similar fate by thy might.

12. Hearing this, he looked at the goddesses and said, now will I go

to the war from here, and leave this my lady as an humble bee at your

lotus feet.

13. Saying so, the king rose in a rage from his seat and sprang like

the enraged lion from the den, when pierced and pressed by the tusk of

a furious elephant.

14. The widowed Lílá beheld the queen Lílá to be exactly of her form

and features, and took her for a true inflexion of herself in a mirror.

15. Then said the enlightened Lílá to Sarasvatí:—Tell me, O goddess!

how this lady here is exactly as myself, she is what I have been

before, and how she came to be as myself.

16. I see this prime minister with all these soldiers and citizens,

these forces and vehicles, to be the same as mine, and situated in the

same place and manner as before.

17. How is it then, O goddess! that they came to be placed in this

place. I see them as Images situated within and without the mirror of

my mind, and know not whether these be living beings (or the false

chimeras of my imagination).

18. Sarasvatí replied:—All our external perceptions of things, are the

immediate effects of our internal conceptions of them. The intellect

has the knowledge of all the intelligibles in it, as the mind has the

impressions of mental objects in itself. (Or in other words:—the

intellect is possessed of all intelligence, like the mind of its

thoughts, as they present themselves in dreams. Gloss).

19. The external world appears in an instant in the same form and

manner to one, as he has its notion and impression in his intellect and

mind; and no distance of time or place, nor any intermediate cause can

create any difference in them.

20. The inward world is seen on the outside, as the internal

impressions of our minds, appear to be seen without us in our dreams.

Whatever is within us, the same appears without us, as in our dreams

and desires, and in all our imaginations and fancies of objects.

21. It is the constant habitude of your mind, that presented these

things as realities to your sight, and you saw your husband in the same

state in which you thought him to be, when he died in that city of

yours.

22. It is the same place wherein he exists at present, and is presented

with the same objects of his thought at present as he had at that

moment. Any thing that appears to be different in this state, proceeds

from the turn of his mind of thinking it so before.

23. All that appears real to him, is as unreal as his dream or

desire, and the creation of his fancy; for every thing appears to be

the same as it is thought of in the mind. (All external objects are

representations of their prototypes in the mind).

24. Say therefore what truth can there be in these visionary objects,

which are altogether unsubstantial as dreams, and vanish in the end

into airy nothing.

25. Know then every thing to be no better than nothing; and as a dream

proves to be nothing upon waking, so is waking also a dream and equally

nothing at death.

26. Death in life time is a nullity, and life in death becomes null

and extinct; and these extinctions of life and death, proceed from the

fluctuating nature of our notions of them.

27. So there is neither any entity nor nonentity either, but both

appear to us as fallacies by turns. For what neither was before, nor

will be, after a _Kalpa_ = creation or dissolution, the same cannot

exist to-day or in any _Yuga_ = age, whether gone before or coming

afterwards.

28. That which is never inexistent, is the ever existent Brahma, and

the same is the world. It is in him that we see everything to rise and

fall by our fallacy, and what we falsely term as the creation or the

created.

29. As phantoms appearing in the vacuum, are all vacant and void, and

as the waves of the sea, are no other than its water; so do these

created things exist and appear in Brahma only.

30. As the minutiæ appearing in the air, vanish in the air; and as the

dust driven by the winds, are lost in the winds; so the false notions

of yourself and myself, are lost in that Supreme self, in which all

things rise and fall like waves of the ocean.

31. What reliance can there be in this dust of creation, which is no

more than the water of the mirage? The knowledge of individualities is

mere fallacy, when every thing is united in that sole unity.

32. We see apparitions in the dark, though the darkness itself is no

apparition; so our lives and deaths are the false notions of our error,

and the whole existence is equally the production of gross error (máyá).

33. All this is Himself, for He is the great Kalpa or will which

produces every thing; it is He that exists when all things are extinct

in Him; and therefore these appearances, are neither real nor unreal of

themselves.

34. But to say both (the real and unreal) to be Brahma, is a

contradiction; therefore it is He, who fills the infinity of space, and

abides equally in all things and their minutest particles.

35. Wherever the spirit of Brahma abides, and even in the minute

animalcule, it views the whole world in itself; like one thinking on

the heat and cold of fire and frost, has the same sensation within

himself at that moment. (Vide Hume).

36. So doth the pure intellect perceive the Holy Spirit of God within

itself, just as one sees the particles of light flying in his closet at

sunrise.

37. So do these multitudes of worlds, move about as particles in the

infinite space of the Divine mind, as the particles of odoriferous

substances oscillate in the empty air.

38. In this manner does this world abide in its incorporeal state

in the mind of God, with all its modifications of existence and

inexistence, emanation and absorption, of its condensation and

subtilization and its mobility and rest.

39. But you must know all these modes and these conditions of being

to belong to material bodies only and not to the spirit, which is

unconditioned and indivisible (_i.e._ without attributes and parts).

40. And as there is no change or division of one’s own soul, so there

is no partition or variation of the Supreme Spirit. It is according to

the ideas in our minds, that we view things in their different aspects

before us.

41. Yet the word world—_visva_—all, is not a meaningless term; it

means the all as contained in Brahma (who is _to pan_). Therefore it is

both real and unreal at the same time like the fallacy of a snake in a

rope.

42. It is the false notion (of the snake), that makes the true (rope)

to appear as the untrue snake to us, which we are apt to take for the

true snake itself, so we take the Divine Intellect, which is the prime

cause of all, as a living soul (like ours), by mistake.

43. It is this notion (of the living soul), that makes us to think

ourselves as living beings, which whether it be false or true, is like

the appearance of the world in empty air.

44. Thus these little animals delight themselves with their own

misconceived idea of being living beings, while there are others who

think themselves so, by their preconceived notions as such.

45. Some there are that have no preconceived notions, and others that

retain the same as or somewhat different notions of themselves than

before. Somewhere the inborn notions are predominant, and sometimes

they are entirely lost.

46. Our preconceived notions of ourselves, represent unrealities as

realities to our minds, and present the thoughts of our former family

and birth, and the same occupations and professions before us (as also

the enjoyments we had before and no more existent at present).

47. Such are the representations of your former ministers and citizens,

imprinted as realities in your soul, together with the exact time and

place and manner of their functions, as before.

48. And as the intelligence of all things, is present in the omniscient

spirit of God, so is the idea of royalty inherent in the soul of the

prince (_i.e._ like the ex-king Lear, he thinks himself every inch a

king).

49. This notion of his goes before him as his shadow in the air, with

the same stature and features, and the same acts and movements as he

had before.

50. In this manner, Lílá! Know this world to be but a shadowy reflexion

of the eternal ideas of God; and this reflection is caught by or

refracted in the consciousness of all animal souls as in a prismatic

mirror.

51. Everything shows itself in every place in the form in which it

is; so whatever there is in the living soul, casts out a reflexion

of itself, and a shadow of it is caught by the intellect, which is

situated without it. (The mind is a mirror of the images in the soul).

52. Here is the sky containing the world, which contains this earth,

wherein you and myself and this prince are situated, as reflexions of

the One Ego only. Know all these to be contained within the vacuous

womb of the Intellect, and to remain as tranquil and transparent as

vacuity itself.

CHAPTER XLV.

THEISM CONSISTING IN TRUE KNOWLEDGE.

Sarasvatí continued:—Know Lílá! this Vidúratha, thy husband, will

lose his life in this battle-field; and his soul will repair to the

sepulchre in the inner apartment, where it will resume its former state.

2. Upon hearing these words of the goddess, the second Lílá, who was

standing by, bent herself lowly before the goddess, and addressed her

with her folded palms.

3. The second Lílá’s speech. Goddess! the genius of intelligence is

ever adored by me, and she gives me her visits in my nightly dreams.

4. I find thee here exactly of her likeness; therefore give me thy

blessing, thou goddess with the beauteous face.

5. Vasishtha said:—The goddess being thus addressed by the lady,

remembered her faith and reliance in her, and then spake with

complacence to the lady standing suppliant before her.

6. The goddess said:—I am pleased my child, with thy unfailing and

unslakened adoration of me all thy lifetime; now say what thou askest

of me.

7. The second Lílá said:—Ordain O goddess, that I may accompany my

husband with this body of mine to whatever place he is destined to go,

after his death in the war.

8. The goddess replied:—Be it so my child; that hast worshipped

me with all diligence and without fail, with flowers, incense and

offerings.

9. Vasishtha said:—The second Lílá being gladdened by this blessing

of the goddess, the first Lílá, was much puzzled in her mind at the

difference of their states.

10. The first Lílá said:—Those who are desirous of truth, and they

whose desires lean towards godliness, have all their wishes fulfilled

without delay and fail.

11. Then tell me, goddess! why could I not keep company with my

Bráhmana husband with my body of the Bráhmaní, but had to be taken

to him in the hilly mansion after my death, (and reproduction in the

present form).

12. The goddess answered saying:—Know O excellent lady! that I have no

power to do anything; but every thing happens to pass according to the

desire of the living being.

13. Know me only as the presiding divinity of wisdom, and I reveal

everything according to my knowledge of it. It is by virtue of the

intellectual powers as exhibited in every being, that it attains its

particular end.

14. It is according to the development of the mental powers of living

beings in every state, that it obtains its object in the manner and in

the same state as it aims at.

15. You had attained the powers of your understanding by your

devotedness to my service, and have always desired of me for being

liberated from flesh.

16. I have accordingly awakened your understanding in that way, whereby

you have been able to arrive at your present state of purity.

17. It was by cause of your constant desire of liberation, that you

have gained the same state, by enlargement (of the powers) of your

intellect.

18. Whoever exerts his bodily powers according to the dictates of his

understanding, is sure to succeed in gaining his object sooner or later.

19. Performance of austerities and adoration of gods, are as vain

without cultivation of the intellect, as to expect the falling of

fruits from the sky.

20. Without cultivation of the intellect and exertion of manly powers,

there is no way to success; do therefore as you may choose for yourself.

21. It is verily the state of one’s mind, that leads his internal soul

to that state which it thinks upon, and to that prosperity which it

attempts to obtain. 22. Now distinguish between what is desirable or

disagreeable to you, and choose that which is holy and perfect, and you

will certainly arrive to it.

CHAPTER XLVI.

ONSLAUGHT OF VIDÚRATHA.

Ráma said:—Relate to me the acts of Vidúratha, after he went out

enraged from the camp, and left the ladies and the goddess talking in

that manner.

2. Vasishtha said:—Vidúratha left his camp in company with a large

body of his companions like the bright moon beset by a host of stars.

3. He was in armour and girt by laces and girdles, and thus attired

in his martial habit, he went forth amidst the loud war cry of _vae

victis_, like the god Indra going to battle.

4. He gave orders to the soldiers and was informed of the battle array;

and having given directions to his captains, he mounted his chariot.

5. It was adorned with mountings resembling the pinnacles of mountains

and beset by five flags fringed with strings of pearls and gems,

resembling a celestial car.

6. The iron hoops of its wheels flashed with their golden pegs, and the

long and beautiful shaft of the car, rang with the tinkling of pearls

which were suspended to it.

7. It was drawn by long necked, swift and slender horses of the best

breed and auspicious marks; that seemed to fly in the air by their

swiftness and bearing aloft a heavenly car with some god in it.

8. Being impatient of the swiftness of the winds, they spurred them

with their hinder heels and left them behind, and sped the forepart of

their bodies as if to devour the air, impeding their course.

9. The car was drawn by eight coursers with their manes hanging down

their necks like flappers, and white spots or circlets resembling the

disks of moon on their foreheads, and filling the eight sides around

with their hoarse neighing. 10. At this time there rose a loud noise

of the elephants, resounding like drums from the hollows of the distant

hills.

11. Loud clamours (kala-kalas) were raised by the infuriate soldiers,

and the tinkling of their belted trinkets (kinkini), and clashing of

their weapons, rang afar in the open air.

12. The crackling (chatachata) of the bows, and the wheezing (shitkara)

of the arrows, joined with the jangle (jhanjhana) of armours, by their

clashing against one another, raised a confused hubbub all around.

13. The sparkling (kanatkara) of blazing fire, and the mutual challenge

of the champions; the painful shrieks of the wounded and the piteous

cry of captives, were seen and heard on all sides.

14. The mingled sounds thickened in the air, and filled its cavity and

its sides as with solid stones and capable of being clutched in the

hands.

15. Clouds of dust flew as fast and thick into the air, that they

seemed to be the crust or strata of the earth, rising upward to block

the path of the sun in the sky.

16. The great city was hid in the dark womb of the overspreading dust

(rajas), as the ignorant state of man is covered in darkness by the

rising passion (rajas) of juvenescence.

17. The burning lights became as dim, as the fading stars of heaven by

day light, and the darkness of night became as thick, as the devils of

darkness gather their strength at night.

18. The two Lílás saw the great battle with the virgin daughter of

the minister from the tent; and they had their eyes enlightened with

farsightedness by favour of the goddess.

19. Now there was an end of the flashing and clashing of the hostile

arms in the city, as the flash and crash of submarine fires were put to

an end by the all-submerging floods of the universal deluge.

20. Vidúratha collected his forces and without considering the

superiority of the hostile power pressed himself forward amidst them,

as the great Meru rushed into the waters of the great deluge.

21. Now the twanging of the bow strings emitted a clattering

(Chatachata) sound; and the forces of the enemy advanced in battle

array, like bodies of clouds with rainbows amidst them.

22. Many kinds of missiles flew as falcons in the air; and the black

steel waved with a dark glare owing to the massacres they made.

23. The clashing swords flashed with living flames of fire by their

striking against one another; and showers of arrows whistled like

hissing rainfalls in the air.

24. Two edged saws pierced the bodies of the warriors; and the flinging

weapons hurtled in the air by their clashing at and crashing of each

other.

25. The darkness of the night was put to flight by the blaze of the

weapons; and the whole army was pierced by arrows, sticking as the

hairs on their bodies.

26. Headless trunks moved about as players in the horrid solemnity of

the god of death (Yama); and the furies fled about at the dint of war,

like the raving lasses at Bacchanal revelries.

27. Elephants fighting with their tusks, sent a clattering noise in the

air; and the stones flung from the slings, flew as a flowing stream in

the sky.

28. Bodies of men were falling dead on the ground, like the dried

leaves of forests blown away by blasts; and streams of blood were

running in the field of battle, as if the heights of war were pouring

down the floods of death below.

29. The dust of the earth was set down by the floods of blood, and the

darkness was dispelled by the blaze of weapons; all clamour ceased

in intense fighting, and the fear for life, was lost under the stern

resolution of death.

30. The fighting was stern without a cry or noise, like the pouring

of rain in the breezeless sky, and with the glitter of swords in the

darkened air, like the flashes of forky lightnings amidst the murky

clouds.

31. The darts were flying about with a hissing noise (khad-khada);

and the crow-bars hit one another with a harsh (taktaka) sound; large

weapons were struck upon one another with a jarring noise (jhanjhana),

and the dreadful war raged direfully in the dim darkness (timitimi) of

the night.

CHAPTER XLVII.

ENCOUNTER OF SINDHU AND VIDÚRATHA.

Vasishtha said:—As the war was waging thus furiously between the two

armies, the two Lílás addressed the goddess of knowledge and said:—

2. “Tell us, O goddess! what unknown cause prevents our husband to gain

the victory in this war, notwithstanding your good grace to him, and

his repelling the hostile elephants in the combat”.

3. Sarasvatí replied:—Know ye daughters, that I was ever solicited by

Vidúratha’s enemy to confer him victory in battle, which your husband

never craved of me.

4. He lives and enjoys his life as it was desired by him, while his

antagonist gains the conquest according to his aim and object.

5. Knowledge is contained in the consciousness of every living being,

and rewards every one according to the desire to which it is directed.

6. My nature like that of all things is as unchangeable as the heat

of fire (which never changes to cold). So the nature of Vidúratha’s

knowledge of truth, and his desire of liberation lead him to the like

result (and not to victory).

7. The intelligent Lílá also will be liberated with him, and not the

unintelligent one, who by her nature is yet unprepared for that highest

state of bliss.

8. This enemy of Vidúratha, the king of Sinde, has long worshipped me

for his victory in war; whereby the bodies of Vidúratha and his wife

must fall into his hands.

9. Thou girl wilt also have thy liberation like hers in course of time;

but ere that, this enemy of yours,—the king of Sinde, will reign

victorious in this earth.

10. Vasishtha said:—As the goddess was speaking in this manner, the

sun appeared on his rising hill to behold the wondrous sight of the

forces in fighting.

11. The thick mists of night disappeared like the hosts of the enemy

(Sinde); and left the forces of Vidúratha to glitter as stars at the

approach of night.

12. The hills and dales and the land and water gradually appeared to

sight, and the world seemed to reappear to view from amidst the dark

ocean of the (deluge).

13. The bright rays of the rising sun radiated on all sides like the

streams of liquid gold, and made the hills appear as the bodies of

warriors besmeared with (blood).

14. The sky seemed as an immense field of battle, stretched over by the

radiant rays of the sun (Karas), likening the shining arms (Karas) of

the warriors, shaking in their serpentine mood.

15. The helmets on their heads raised their lotus-like tops on high,

and the rings about their ears blazed with their gemming glare below.

16. The pointed weapons were as fixed as the snouts of unicorns, and

the flying darts fled about as butterflies in the air. The bloody field

presented a picture of the ruddy dawn and dusk, and the dead bodies on

the ground, represented the figures of motionless saints in their Yoga.

17. Necklaces like snakes overhung their breasts, and the armours like

sloughs of serpents covered their bodies. The flags were flying like

crests of creepers on high, and the legs of the warriors stood as

pillars in the field.

18. Their long arms were as branches of trees, and the arrows formed

a bush of reeds; the flash of weapons spread as a verdant meadow all

around, while their blades blazed with the lustre of the long-leaved

_ketaka_ flowers.

19. The long lines of weapons formed as rows of bamboos and bushes

of brambles, and their mutual clashing emitted sparks of fire like

clusters of the red _asoka_ flowers.

20. The bands of Siddhas were flying away with their leaders from the

air, to avert the weapons which were blazing there with the radiance

of the rising sun, and forming as it were, a city of gold on high.

21. The sky re-echoed to the clashing of darts and discuses, of swords

and spears and of mallets and clubs in the field; and the ground was

overflown by streams of blood, bearing away the dead bodies of the

slain.

22. The land was strewn with crowbars, lances and spears, and with

tridents and stones on all sides; and headless bodies were falling

hideously, pierced by poles and pikes and other instruments of death.

23. The ghosts and goblins of death were making horrible noise above,

and the shining cars of Sindhu and Vidúratha, moved with a loud

rumbling below.

24. They appeared as the two luminaries of the sun and moon in heaven,

and equipped with their various weapons of disks and rods, of crowbars

and spears, and other missiles besides.

25. They were both surrounded by thousands of soldiers, and turned

about as thy liked, with loud shouts of their retinues.

26. Crushed under heavy disks, many fell dead and wounded with loud

cries; and big elephants were floating lightly on the currents of blood.

27. The hairs on the heads of dead bodies, floated like weeds in the

stream of blood, and the floating discuses glided like the disks of the

moon, reflected in the purple streamlet.

28. The jingling (jhanat) of gemming ornaments, and the tinkling

(ranat) bells of war carriages, with the flapping (patat) of flags by

the wind, filled the field with a confused noise.

29. Numbers of valiant as well as dastardly soldiers followed their

respective princes, some bleeding under the spears of Kuntas and others

pierced by the arrows of bowyers.

30. Then the two princes turned round their chariots in circling

rings over the ground, and amidst phalanxes armed with all sorts of

destructive weapons.

31. Each confronted the other with his arms, and having met one

another face to face, commenced showering forth his arrows with the

pattering sound of hailstones.

32. They both threatened one another with the roaring of loud surges

and clouds, and the two lions among men, darted their arrows upon one

another in their rage.

33. They flung their missiles in the air in the form of stones and

malls, and some faced like swords, and others headed as mallets.

34. Some were as sharp edged disks, and some as curved as battle axes;

some were as pointed as pikes and spears, and others as bars and rods

in their forms, and some were of the shape of tridents, and others as

bulky as blocks of stones.

35. These missives were falling as fully and as fast as blocks of

stones, which are hurled down from high and huge rocks, by gusts of

blustering hurricanes. And the meeting of the two armigerent powers,

was as the confluence of the Indus and the sea, with tremendous

roaring, and mutual collision and clashing.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

DESCRIPTION OF DAIVÁSTRAS OR SUPERNATURAL WEAPONS.[23]

Vasishtha said:—Rájá Vidúratha, finding the high shouldered

Sindhu-rája before him, was enraged like the raging sun, in his mid-day

fury.

2. The twanging of his bow resounded in the air on all sides, and

growled as loudly as the howling of winds in the caverns of mountains.

3. He drew his arrows from the dark quiver, and darted them like the

rays of the sun rising from the womb of night.

4. Each arrow flung from the bowstring, flew as thousands in the air,

and fell as millions on the ground. (The arrow or _bána_ is a name

given to bombs which burst out into unnumbered shells).

5. The king Sindhu was equally expert in his bowmanship, as both of

these bowyers owed their skill in archery to the favour of Vishnu.

6. Some of these darts were called bolts, which blocked the aerial

passages as with bolts at their doors, and fell down on the ground with

the loud roar of thunderbolts.

7. Others begirt with gold, flew hissing as if blown by the winds in

the air, and after shining as stars in the sky, fell as blazing meteors

on the ground.

8. Showers of shafts poured forth incessantly from the hands of

Vidúratha, like the ceaseless torrents of rivers or billows of the sea,

and the endless radiation of solar rays.

9. Shells and bullets were flying about as sparks of fire struck out

of the balls of red-hot iron, and falling as flowers of forests, blown

away by gusts of wind.

10. They fell as showers of rainwater, and as the rush of water-falls;

and as plentifully as the sparks of fire which flew from the burning

city of Vidúratha.

11. The jarring sound (chatchat) of their bowstrings, hushed the

clamour of the two armies, as a calm quiets the roaring of the raging

sea.

12. The course of the arrows, was as the stream of Ganges (the milky

path) in heaven, running towards the king Sindhu, as the river runs to

meet the sea (Sindhu).

13. The shower of arrows flying from the golden bow of the king, was as

the flood of rain falling under the variegated rainbow in the sky.

14. Then Lílá the native of that city, saw from the window the darts of

her husband, rushing like the currents of Ganges, against the forces of

Sindhu resembling a sea.

15. She understood the flight of those darts to promise victory to her

lord, and then spoke gladly to Sarasvatí, with her lotus like face

(Lit.—by opening her lotus like mouth).

16. Be victorious O goddess! and behold victory waiting on the side

of my lord, whose darts are piercing the rocks, and breaking them to

pieces.

17. As she was uttering these words full of affection (to her lord),

the goddesses eyed her askance, and smiled at her womanish tenderness

of heart.

18. The flaming (Agastian) fire of Sindhu swallowed the raging sea of

Vidúratha’s arrows, as the submarine fire consumes the water, and as

Jahnu drank the stream of Ganges.

19. The missive weapons of Sindhu, thwarted the thickening arrows of

his adversary, and drove them back broken and flying as dust in the

empty air.

20. As an extinguished lamp loses its light in the air, so the flashes

of the fire arms disappeared in the sky, and nobody knew where they

fled.

21. Having thus dispelled the shower of arrows, he sent a thick cloud

of his weapons, appearing as hundreds of dead bodies flying in the air.

22. Vidúratha repelled them quickly by means of his better bolts, as a

hurricane disperses the frightening clouds in the air.

23. Both the kings being thus baffled in their aims by the opposing

arms, which were indiscriminately let loose against one another, laid

hold on more potent missiles (which they had got as gifts of their gods

to them).

24. Sindhu then let fly his magic missile the gift of a Gandharva to

him, which kept his hostile army all spell-bound except Vidúratha’s

self.

25. Struck with this weapon, the soldiers became as mute as moonstruck,

staring in their looks, and appearing as dead bodies or as pictures in

a painting.

26. As the soldiers of Vidúratha remained exorcised in their files, the

king employed his instruments of a counter-charm to remove the spell.

27. This awakened the senses of Vidúratha’s men as the morning twilight

discloses the bed of lotuses, and the rising sun opens their closed

petals to light; while Sindhu like the raging sun darted his rage upon

them.

28. He flung his serpentine weapons upon them, which bound them as fast

as a band all about their bodies, and encircled the battle ground and

air, like snakes twining round the craigs and rocks.

29. The ground was filled with snakes as the lake with the spreading

stalks of lotuses, and the bodies of gigantic warriors were begirt by

them, like hills by huge and horrible hydras.

30. Everything was overpowered by the poignant power of the poison, and

the inhabitants of the hills and forests were benumbed by the venomous

infection.

31. The smart poison spread a fiery heat all around, and the frozen

snows like fire-brands sent forth their burning particles which were

wafted by the hot winds in the air.

32. The armigerous Vidúratha who was equally skilled in arms, had

then recourse to his Garuda or serpivorous weapons, which fled like

mountainous eagles to all sides.

33. Their golden pinions spread in the sky on all sides, and

embroidered the air with purple gold; and the flapping of their wings

wheezed like a breeze, which blew away the poisonous effluvia afar in

the air.

34. It made the snakes breathe out of their nostrils with a hissing,

resembling the gurgling (ghurghur) of waters in a whirlpool in the sea.

35. The flying Garuda weapons devoured the creeping terrene serpents

with a whistling noise (salsala), like that of the rising waters

(water-spouts), in the act of their suction by Agastya—the sun.

36. The face of the ground delivered from its covering of these

reptiles, again appeared to view, as the surface of the earth

re-appeared to light, after its deliverance from the waters of the

deluge.

37. The army of Garudas disappeared afterwards from sight, like a line

of lamps put out by the wind, and the assemblage of clouds vanishing in

autumn.

38. They fled like flying mountains for fear of the bolts of the

thundering Indra; and vanished like the evanescent world seen in a

dream, or as an aerial castle built by fancy.

39. Then king Sindhu shot his shots of darkness (smoke), which darkened

the scene like the dark cave under the ground.

40. It hid the face of the earth and sky, like the diluvian waters

reaching to the welkin’s face; making the army appear as a shoal of

fishes, and the stars as gems shining in the deep.

41. The overspreading darkness appeared as a sea of ink or dark

quagmire, or as the particles of Anjanagiri (Inky mountain) wafted by

the breeze over the face of nature.

42. All beings seemed to be immersed in the sea or darkness, and to

lose their energies as in the deep gloom of midnight.

43. Vidúratha the best of the most skilful in ballistics, shot his

sun-bright shot which like the sun illumined the vault of the sky.

44. It rose high amidst the overspreading darkness like the sun

(Agastya) with his effulgent beams, and dispelled the shades of

darkness, as autumn does the rainy clouds.

45. The sky being cleared of its veil of darkness, manifested itself

with its reddish clouds, resembling the blowzy bodices of damsels

before the king. (Here is a pun upon the word _payodhara_ which means

both a cloud and the breast of a woman).

46. Now the landscape appeared in full view, like the understanding

(good sense) of men coming in full play after the extinction of their

avarice.

47. The enraged Sindhu then laid hold on his dreadful Rákshasa weapon,

which he instantly flung on his foe with its bedeviled darts.

48. These horrid and destructive darts flew on all sides in the air,

and roared as the roaring sea and elephantine clouds (dighastis) of

heaven.

49. They were as the flames of lambent fire, with their long licking

tongues and ash-coloured and smoky curls, rising as hoary hairs on the

head, and making a _chat-chat_ sound like that of moist fuel set up on

fire.

50. They wheeled round in circles through the air, with a horrible

_tangtang_ noise, now flaming as fire and now fuming as smoke, and then

flying about as sparks of fire.

51. With mouths beset by rows of sprouting teeth like lotus stalks,

and faces defaced by dirty and fusty eyes, their hairy bodies were as

stagnate pools full of moss and weeds.

52. They flew about and flashed and roared aloud as some dark clouds,

while the locks of hairs on their heads glared as lightnings in the

midway sky.

53. At this instant Vidúratha the spouse of Lílá, sent forth his

Náráyana weapon, having the power of suppressing wicked spirits and

demons.

54. The appearance of this magic weapon, made the bodies of the

Rákshasas, disappear as darkness at sun rise.

55. The whole army of these fiends was lost in the air, as the sable

clouds of the rainy season, vanish into nothing at the approach of

autumn.

56. Then Sindhu discharged his fire arms which set fire to the sky, and

began to burn down every thing, as by the all destroying conflagration

of the last day.

57. They filled all the sides of air with clouds of smoke, which seemed

to hide the face of heaven under the darkness of hell.

58. They set fire to the woods in the hills, which burned like

mountains of gold; while the trees appeared to bloom with yellow

_champaka_ flowers all around.

59. All the sides of the sky above, and the hills, woods and groves

below, were enveloped in the flames, as if they were covered under the

red powder of _huli_, with which Yama was sporting over the plain.

60. The heaven-spreading flame burnt down the legions in one heap of

ashes, as the submarine fire consumes whole bodies of the fleet and

navy in the sea.

61. As Sindhu continued to dart his firearms against his vanquished

adversary, Vidúratha let off his watery arms with reverential regard.

62. These filled with water, flew forward as the shades of darkness

from their hidden cells; and spread up and down and on all sides, like

a melted mountain gushing in a hundred cataracts.

63. They stretched as mountainous clouds or as a sea in the air, and

fell in showers of watery arrows and stones on the ground.

64. They flew up like large _tamála_ trees, and being gathered in

groups like the shades of night, appeared as the thick gloom beyond the

_lokáloka_ or polar mountains.

65. They gave the sky the appearance of subterraneous caves, emitting

a gurgling sound (ghurghura) like the loud roaring of elephants.

66. These waters soon drank (cooled) the spreading furious fire, as the

shades of the dark night swallow (efface) the surrounding red tints of

the evening.

67. Having swallowed the fires above, the waters overflooded the ground

and filled it with a humidity which served to enervate all bodies, as

the power of sleep numbs every body in death-like torpidity.

68. In this manner both the kings were throwing their enchanted weapons

against each other, and found them equally quelling and repelling one

another in their course.

69. The heavy armed soldiers of Sindhu and the captains of his

regiments were swept away by the flood, together with the warcars which

floated upon it.

70. At this moment, Sindhu thought upon his anhydrous weapons

(soshanástre—thermal arms), which possessed the miraculous power of

preserving his people from the water, and hurled them in the air.

71. These absorbed the waters as the sun sucks up the moisture of the

night, and dried up the land and revived the soldiers, except those

that were already dead and gone.

72. Their heat chased the coldness as the rage of the illiterate

enrages the learned, and made the moist ground as dry, as when the

sultry winds strew the forest land with dried leaves.

73. It decorated the face of the ground with a golden hue, as when the

royal dames adorn their persons with a yellow paint or ointment.

74. It put the soldiers on the opposite side to a state of feverish (or

blood heated) fainting, as when the tender leaves of trees are scorched

by the warmth of a wild fire in summer heat.

75. Vidúratha in his rage of warfare laid hold on his bow (kodanda),

and having bent it to a curve, let fly his cloudy arms on his

antagonist.

76. They sent forth columns of clouds as thick as the sable shades of

night, which flying upward as a forest of dark _tamála_ trees, spread

an umbrage heavy with water on high.

77. They lowered under the weight of their water, and stood still by

their massive thickness; and roared aloud in their circles all over the

sky.

78. Then blew the winds dropping the dewdrops of the icy store

they bore on their pinions; and showers of rain fell fast from the

collections of the clouds on high.

79. Then flashed the fiery lightnings from them like golden serpents in

their serpentine course or rather like the aslant glances of the eyes

of heavenly nymphs.

80. The roarings of the clouds rebounded in the mountainous caverns

of the sky, and the quarters of heaven re-echoed to the same with the

hoarse noise of elephants and the roaring of lions and growling of

tigers and bears.

81. Showers of rain fell in floods with drops as big as _musalas_—malls

or mallets, and with flashes of lightnings threatening as the stern

glancings of the god of death.

82. Huge mists rising at first in the form of vapours of the earth, and

then borne aloft by the heated air into the sky, seemed like titans

to rise from the infernal regions (and then invade heaven with their

gloomy armament).

83. The mirage of the warfare ceased after a while; as the worldly

desires subside to rest upon tasting the sweet joys attending on divine

knowledge.

84. The ground became full of mud and mire and was impassable in every

part of it; and the forces of Sindhu were overflown by the watery

deluge, like the river Sinde or the sea.

85. He then hurled his airy weapon which filled the vault of heaven

with winds, and raged in all their fury like the Bhairava-Furies on the

last day of resurrection.

86. The winds blew on all sides of the sky, with darts falling as

thunder bolts, and hailstones now piercing and then crushing all bodies

as by the last blast of nature on the dooms-day.

CHAPTER XLIX.

DESCRIPTION OF OTHER KINDS OF WEAPONS.

Then blew the icy winds of winter, blasting the beauty of the foliage

of forest trees, and shaking and breaking the beautiful arbors, and

covering them with gusts of dust.

2. Then rose the gale whirling the trees like birds flying in the

air, dashing and smashing the soldiers on the ground, and hurling and

breaking the edifices to dust.

3. This fearful squall blew away Vidúratha and his force, as a rapid

current carries away the broken and rotten fragments of wood.

4. Then Vidúratha who was skilled in ballistics hurled his huge and

heavy arrows, which stretched themselves to the sky, and withstood the

force of the winds and rain.

5. Opposed by these rock-like barriers, the airy weapons were at a

stand still, as the animal spirits are checked by the firm stoicity of

the soul.

6. The trees which had been blown up by the winds and floating in the

breezy air, now came down and fell upon the dead bodies, like flocks of

crows upon putrid carcasses.

7. The shouting (shitkára) of the city, the distant hum (dátkára)

of the village, the howling (bhánkára) of forests, and the rustling

(utkára) of the trees, ceased on all sides like the vain verbiology of

men.

8. Sindhu saw burning rocks (rockets?) falling from above like leaves

of trees, and flying about as the winged Mainákas or moving rocks of

the sea or Sinde (sindhu).

9. He then hurled his thundering weapons, falling as flaming

thunderbolts from heaven, which burnt the rocks away as the flaming

fire destroys the darkness.

10. These falling bolts broke the stones with their pointed ends, and

hewed down the heads (tops) of the hills, like a hurricane scattering

the fruits of trees on the ground.

11. Vidúratha then darted his Brahmá weapon to quell the thunderbolts,

which jostling against one another, disappeared in their mutual

conflict.

12. Sindhu then cast his demoniac weapons (Pisáchástras) as black as

darkness, which fled as lines of horrid Pisácha demons on all sides.

13. They filled the firmament with the darkness of their bodies, and

made the daylight turn to the shade of night, as if it were for fear of

them.

14. They were as stalwart in their figures as huge columns of smoke,

and as dark in their complexion as the blackest pitch, and tangible by

the hand.

15. They were as lean skeletons with erect hairs on their heads and

bearded faces, with looks as pale as those of beggars, and bodies as

black as those of the aerial and nocturnal fiends.

16. They were terrific and like idiots in their looks, and moved about

with bones and skulls in their hands. They were as meagre as churls,

but more cruel than either the sword or thunderbolt.

17. The Pisáchas lurk about the woods, bogs and highways, and pry into

empty and open door houses. They hunt about as ghosts in their dark

forms, and fly away as fast as the fleeting lightning.

18. They ran and attacked with fury the remaining forces of the enemy,

that stood weaponless in the field, with their broken and sorrowful

hearts.

19. Frightened to death they stood motionless, and dropped down their

arms and armours, and stood petrified as if they were demon-struck,

with staring eyes, open mouths, and unmoving hands and feet.

20. They let fall both their lower and upper garments, loosened their

bowels and slakened their bodies through fear, and kept shaking as

fixed trees by the winds.

21. The line of the Pisáchas then advanced to frighten Vidúratha out

of his wits, but he had the good sense to understand them as the mere

Mumbo-jumbos of magic.

22. He knew the counter charm to fight out the Pisáchas from the field,

and employed his charmed weapons against the Pisácha army of his enemy.

23. He darted in his ire the Rúpiká weapon, which gave comfort to his

own army, and deluded the Pisácha force of his adversary.

24. These Rúpikás flew in the air with erect hairs on their heads;

their terrific eyes were sunk in their sockets, and their waists and

breasts moved as trees with bunches of fruit.

25. They had past their youth and become old; and their bodies were

bulky and worn out with age; they had deformed backs and hips, and

protuberant navels and naves.

26. They had dark dusky bodies, and held human skulls in their hands

all besmeared with blood. They had bits of half devoured flesh in their

mouths, and pouring out fresh blood from their sides.

27. They had a variety of gestures, motions and contortions of their

bodies, which were as hard as stone, with wry faces, crooked backs and

twisted legs and limbs.

28. Some had their faces like those of dogs, crows, and owls, with

broad mouths and flat cheek-bones and bellies, and held human skulls

and entrails in their hands.

29. They laid hold of the Pisáchas as men catch little boys, and joined

with them in one body as their consorts. (_i.e._ The Rúpiká witches

bewitching the demoniac Pisáchas, got the better of them).

30. They joined together in dancing and singing with outstretched arms

and mouths and eyes, now joining hand in hand and now pursuing one

another in their merry sport.

31. They stretched their long tongues from their horrid mouths, and

licked away the blood exuding from the wounds of the dead bodies.

32. They plunged in the pool of blood with as much delight, as if

they dived in a pond of ghee, and scrabbled in the bloody puddle with

outstretched arms and feet, and uplifted ears and nose.

33. They rolled and jostled with one another in the puddle of carrion

and blood, and made it swell like the milky ocean when churned by the

Mandara mountain.

34. As Vidúratha employed his magic weapon against the magic of Sindhu,

so he had recourse to others from a sense of his inferiority.

35. He darted his Vetála weapon, which made the dead bodies, whether

with or without their heads, to rise up in a body in their ghastly

shapes.

36. The joint forces of the Vetálas, Pisáchas and Rúpikás presented a

dreadful appearance as that of the Kavandhas, and seemed as they were

ready to destroy the earth.

37. The other monarch was not slow to show his magical skill, by

hurling his Rákshasa weapon, which threatened to grasp and devour the

three worlds.

38. These with their gigantic bodies rose as high as mountains, and

seemed as hellish fiends appearing from the infernal regions in their

ghostly forms.

39. The ferocious body of the roaring Rákshasas, terrified both the

gods and demigods (surásuras), by their loud martial music and war

dance of their headless trunks (Kavandhas).

40. The giddy Vetálas, Yakshas and Kushmándas, devoured the fat and

flesh of dead bodies as their toast, and drank the gory blood as their

lurid wines in the coarse of their war dance.

41. The hopping and jumping of the Kushmándas, in their war dance in

streams of blood, scattered its crimson particles in the air, which

assembled in the form of a bridge of red evening clouds over the

sparkling sea.

CHAPTER L.

DEATH OF VIDÚRATHA.

Vasishtha said:—As the tide of war was rolling violently with a

general massacre on both sides, the belligerent monarchs thought on the

means of saving their own forces from the impending ruin.

2. The magnanimous Sindhurája, who was armed with patience, called to

his mind the Vaishnava weapon, which was the greatest of arms and as

powerful as Siva (Jove) himself.

3. No sooner was the Vaishnava weapon hurled by him with his best

judgment (mantra), than it emitted a thousand sparks of fire from its

flaming blade on all sides.

4. These sparks enlarged into balls, as big and bright as to shine like

hundreds of suns in the sky, and others flew as the lengthy shafts of

cudgels in the air.

5. Some of them filled the wide field of the firmament with

thunderbolts as thick as the blades of grass, and others overspread the

lake of heaven, with battle axes as a bed of lotuses.

6. These poured forth showers of pointed arrows spreading as a net-work

in the sky, and darted the sable blades of swords, scattered as the

leaves of trees in the air.

7. At this time, the rival king Vidúratha, sent forth another Vaishnava

weapon for repelling the former, and removing the reliance of his foe

in his foible.

8. It sent forth a stream of weapons counteracting those of the other,

and overflowing in currents of arrows and pikes, clubs and axes and

missiles of various kinds.

9. These weapons struggled with and justled against one another. They

split the vault of heaven with their clattering, and cracked like loud

thunder claps cleaving the mountain cliffs.

10. The arrows pierced the rods and swords, and the swords hewed

down the axes and lances to pieces. The malls and mallets drove the

missiles, and the pikes broke the spears (saktis).

11. The mallets like Mandara rocks, broke and drove away the rushing

arrows as waves of the sea, and the resistless swords broke to pieces

by striking at the maces.

12. The lances revolved like the halo of the moon, repelling the

black sword-blades as darkness, and the swift missiles flashed as the

destructive fires of Yama.

13. The whirling disks were destroying all other weapons; they stunned

the world by their noise, and broke the mountains by their strokes.

14. The clashing weapons were breaking one another in numbers, and

Vidúratha defeated the arms of Sindhu, as the steadfast mountain defies

the thunders of Indra.

15. The truncheons (Sankus) were blowing away the falchions (asis);

and the spontoons (súlas) were warding off the stones of the slings.

The crow bars (bhusundis) broke down the pointed heads of the pikes

(bhindhipálas).

16. The iron rods of the enemy (parasúlas) were broken by tridents

(trisúlas) of Siva, and the hostile arms were falling down by their

crushing one another to pieces.

17. The clattering shots stopped the course of the heavenly stream, and

the combustion of powder filled the air with smoke.

18. The clashing of dashing weapons lightened the sky like lightnings,

their clattering cracked the worlds like thunderclaps, and their shock

split and broke the mountains like thunderbolts.

19. Thus were the warring weapons breaking one another by their

concussion, and protracting the engagement by their mutual overthrow.

20. As Sindhu was standing still in defiance of the prowess of his

adversary, Vidúratha lifted his own fire-arm, and fired it with a

thundering sound.

21. It set the war chariot of Sindhu on fire like a heap of hay on the

plain, while the Vaishnava weapons filled the etherial sphere with

their meteoric blaze.

22. The two Kings were thus engaged in fierce fighting with each other,

the one darting his weapons like drops of raging rain, and the other

hurling his arms like currents of a deluging river.

23. The two Kings were thus harassing each other like two brave

champions in their contest, when the chariot of Sindhu was reduced to

ashes by its flame.

24. He then fled to the woods like a lion from its cavern in the

mountain, and repelled the fire that pursued him by his aqueous weapons.

25. After losing his car and alighting on the ground, he brandished

his sword and cut off the hoofs and heels of the horses of his enemy’s

chariot in the twinkling of an eye.

26. He hacked every thing that came before him like the lean stalks of

lotuses; when Vidúratha also left his chariot with his _asi_ (ensis) in

hand.

27. Both equally brave and compeers to one another in their skill in

warfare, turned about in their rounds, and scraped their swords into

saws by mutual strokes on one another.

28. With their denticulated weapons, they tore the bodies of their

enemies like fishes crushed under the teeth, when Vidúratha dropt down

his broken sword, and darted his javelin against his adversary.

29. It fell with a rattling noise on the bosom of Sindhu (the king), as

a flaming meteor falls rumbling in the breast of the sea (Sindhu).

30. But the weapon fell back by hitting upon his breast plate, as a

damsel flies back from the embrace of a lover deemed an unfit match for

her.

31. Its shock made Sindhu throw out a flood of blood from his lungs,

resembling the water spout let out from the trunk of an elephant.

32. Seeing this, the native Lílá cried with joy to her sister Lílá: see

here the demon Sindhu killed by our lion-like husband.

33. Sindhu is slain by the javelin of our lion-like lord, like the

wicked demon by the nails of the lion-god Nrisinha, and he is spouting

forth his blood like the stream of water, thrown out by the trunk of an

elephant from a pool.

34. But alas! this Sindhu is trying to mount on another car, although

bleeding so profusely from his mouth and nostrils, as to raise a

wheezing (chulchulu) sound.

35. Lo there! our lord Vidúratha breaking down the golden mountings

of his car with the blows of his mallet, as the thundering

clouds—Pushkara and Ávarta break down the gold peaks of Sumeru.

36. See this Sindhu now mounting on another carriage, which is now

brought before him, and decorated as the splendid seat of a Gandharva.

37. Alack! our lord is now made the mark of Sindhu’s mallet darted as

a thunder bolt against him; but lo! how he flies off and avoids the

deadly blow of Sindhu.

38. Huzza! how nimbly he has got up upon his own car; but woe is to me!

that Sindhu has overtaken him in his flight.

39. He mounts on his car as a hunter climbs on a tree, and pierces my

husband, as a bird-catcher does a parrot hidden in its hollow, with his

pointed arrow.

40. Behold his car is broken down and its flags flung aside; his horses

are hurt and the driver is driven away. His bow is broken and his

armour is shattered, and his whole body is full of wounds.

41. His strong breast-plate is broken also by slabs of stone and his

big head is pierced by pointed arrows. Behold him thrown down on earth,

all mangled in blood.

42. Look with what difficulty he is restored to his senses, and seated

in his seat with his arm cut off and bleeding under Sindhu’s sword.

43. See him weltering in blood gushing out profusely from his body,

like a rubicund stream issuing from a hill of rubies. Woe is me! and

cursed be the sword of Sindhu that hath brought this misery on us.

44. It has severed his thighs as they dissever a tree with a saw, and

has lopped off his legs like the stalks of trees.

45. Ah! it is I that am so struck and wounded and killed by the enemy.

I am dead and gone and burnt away with my husband’s body.

46. Saying so, she began to shudder with fear at the woeful sight of

her husband’s person, and fell insensible on the ground like a creeper

cut off by an axe.

47. Vidúratha though thus mutilated and disabled, was rising to smite

the enemy in his rage, when he fell down from his car like an uprooted

tree, and was replaced there by his charioteer ready to make his

retreat.

48. At this instant, the savage Sindhu struck a sabre on his neck, and

pursued the car in which the dying monarch was borne back to his tent.

49. The body of Padma (alias Vidúratha), was placed like a lotus in the

presence of Sarasvatí, shining with the splendour of the sun; but the

elated Sindhu was kept from entering that abode, like a giddy fly from

a flame.

50. The charioteer entered in the apartment, and placed the body in its

death-bed, all mangled and besmeared with blood, exuding from the pores

of the severed neck, in the presence of the goddess, from where the

enemy returned to his camp.

(_Gloss_). Here Padma fighting in the person of Vidúratha, and falling

bravely in the field, obtained his redemption by his death in the

presence of the goddess; but the savage Sindhu, who slew his foiled

foe in his retreat, proved a ruffian in his barbarous act, and could

have no admittance into the presence of the goddess and to his future

salvation.

CONCLUSION.

The whole vision of Lílá, like that of Mirza, shows the state of human

life, with its various incidents and phases to its last termination

by death. It is not so compact and allegorical as that of the western

essayist; but as idle effusions of those ideal reveries or loose

vagaries which are characteristic of the wild imagination of eastern

rhapsodists. The discontented Bráhmana longs for royal dignity,

imagines to himself all its enjoyments in the person of Padma, and sees

at last all its evils in the character of Vidúratha; which serves as a

lesson to aspirants from aiming at high worldly honours which end in

their destruction.

Lílá by her wisdom sees in her silent meditation, the whole course

and vicissitudes of the world, and the rise and fall of human glory

in the aspirations of her husband. These parables serve to show the

nature of Yoga philosophy to be no other, than an absolute idealism or

mental abstraction, consisting in the abstract knowledge of all things

appertaining to our temporal as well as Spiritual concerns.

The knowledge is derived either by intuition as that of the Bráhmana

and Padma, or by inspiration like that of the genius of wisdom to

her votary Lílá. It may also be had by means of communication with

others, as in the discourse of Ráma and his preceptor; as also from the

attentive perusal of such works as the present one, treating both of

temporal and spiritual subjects, and reviewing them with the eye of the

mind.

The Yogi is said to know all things through the medium of his

intellectual eye (jnána chakshu), apart from his connection with every

thing in the world called _nihsanga_, as it is expressed by the Persian

sophist;—“_amokhteh Oniamekhteh az harche hast_”.—“Knowing and not

mixing with all that is.”

From this view of Yoga, it will appear that, all kinds of knowledge,

whether as it existed among the ancients, or is in the course of its

improvement in modern times, forms a subject of the Yoga or meditative

philosophy, which embraces and comprehends in itself a knowledge of

all practical arts and sciences, as the military art and other things

treated of in this work. Hence it is evident, that a large fund of

learning forms the greatest Yoga, and the most learned among men, were

the greatest thinkers or Yogis amongst mankind in all ages. No rational

being therefore can either refrain from thinking, or employing his

mind to the acquisition of knowledge, both of which are termed Yoga in

Indian philosophy.

But the yogi is commonly believed to be an inspired sage or seer,

viewing all things appearing before him in his dream and vision. These

are sometimes retrospective, and resultants of the vibrations of waking

feelings and imagination, as in the case of the Bráhmana’s anticipation

of royalty as a coming reality.

In many instances they are believed as prospective and prophetic

of future events, as in Padma’s dread of his future life and fate.

In Lílá’s case however they were “no dreams but visions strange”

of supernatural sights, and prophetical of the future state of her

husband, as it was revealed to her by the goddess.

But as there are few that rely any faith “in the baseless fabric of a

vision”, they require to be told that the books of revelation in all

religions are based upon these dreams and visions, which are believed

to be the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the souls of saints, in

the sacred records of all nations.

The holy scriptures furnish us with many texts on the divine origin of

dreams and visions as the following.

“But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall

come to pass in the last days, saith God. I shall pour out of my spirit

upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and

your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

“And on my servants and on my handmaidens, I will pour out in those

days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy;

“And I will shew wonders, in heaven above, and signs in the earth

beneath; blood, and fire and vapour of smoke:

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood &c.”

The Book of Acts, Chap II. v. 16-20.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

GENEALOGY

I. Kálí Mitra.[24]

II. Srídhara Mitra.

III. Sukti Mitra.

IV. Sauveri Mitra.

V. Hari Mitra.

VI. Soma Mitra.

VII. Kesava Mitra.

VIII. Mrityunjaya Mitra.

IX. Dhui Mitra.[25]

X. Nísápati Mitra.

XI. Lambodara Mitra Alias Kuvera.

XII. Parameswara Mitra.[26]

XIII. Dánapati Mitra.

XIV. Jayadeva Mitra.

XV. Shashthivara Mitra.

XVI. Sríkánta Mitra.

XVII. Sivaráma Mitra.

XVIII. Krishnaráma Mitra.

XIX. Sítáráma Mitra.[27]

XX. Gocula Chandra Mitra.

XXI. Jagamohana Mitra.

XXII. Rasika Lála Mitra

XXIII. Vihári Lála Mitra.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cicero “_De senectute._”

[2] Kant says:—‘The pure Ego is the condition of all consciousness,

the condition of the sum total of experience, consequently the Ego is

the source from which the universe is to be deduced.’ Again: “The thing

_per se_ underlying all phenomena, is one and the same substance with

Ego. We know not wherein the Ego is different from it. This identity

of both is only an affirmation of Monism, not of Idealism.” Lewis:

Hist.-Phil. Vol. II. pp. 356-7. Fichte says:—The Non-Ego is a product

of the Ego. It is the Ego which thus creates the necessity for a

Non-Ego and the Non-Ego wanted. Ibid. p. 358.

[3] Because the visible and destructible bodies could not proceed from

the invisible and indestructible essence of God, nor the invisible

and indestructible souls of persons, which are _utpanna_ or produced

from the essence of the eternal and infinite spirit, can have their

extinction except in their main source, when they become instinct in

and identic with the supreme spirit.

[4] The _khecarí_ or aerial mode of meditation is said to confer

liberation from sickness and acts and the grasp of death. Thus;

_Napídyate rogena nacha lipyate karmaná, Bádhyate sa na kalena, yo

mudrám-vetti khecarím._

The mode of conducting it is described as follows.

_Kapála kuhare jihvá, pravesitá viparítagá, Bhruvorantargatá drishtir,

mudrá-bhavati khecarí._

[5] This passage contradicts the belief of his rising and sleeping by

turns at the end of each _kalpa_ of the creation and dissolution of the

world, as well as the popular faith of Hari’s, _sayana_ and Utthána at

the opposite tropics.

[6] The pre-existent substratum is the Noumenon underlying all

phenomena. It is the support of qualities, and something in which all

accidents inhere. Berkeley.

[7] It contradicts the well known axiom of Locke, that, “it is

impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time.”

[8] The unknown substance is the known cause, a spiritual

substance—God. Berkeley.

[9] The venerable Vasishtha would not raise question “where is the

shadow of a shadow?” (_prativimbasya prativambam kutak_), had he known

the discoveries of the modern science of Optics, and the achievements

of photography and phonography, the refractions of prismatic lens and

the vibrations of musical wires.

[10] The gods Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Sun, Indra and all others, are

assimilated into the Supreme Spirit in their state of rest. He is

beyond all attribute and out of the sphere of the universe, and is of

the form of an immutable Intellect.

[11] The living soul is the creative spirit of God, represented by the

divine hypostasis of _Hiranyagarbha_ or Demiurgus, which is dependent

on the Supreme spirit.

[12] _Tanmátra_ or tat-mátra might be rendered from its affinity as

“that matter,” but the idealistic theory of vedánta being opposed to

that of the materialistic, it expresses only the idea and not the

matter.

[13] The conceptualism of Europe, is a doctrine between Realism

and Nominalism and betwixt Idealism and Relationism. The realist

says, universal genera are real and independent existences; but the

nominalist (_like the Pratyaksávádi_) says that, things only exist and

universals are _Flatus venti-pralápa_.

[14] Note. It is the mind that lengthens time by the quick succession

of its thoughts, and shortens it by its quiescence.

[15] This means the demons to have first peopled the borders and skirts

of the earth. See Hesiod. Works and Days. Book I. v. 200.

[16] That the Meru or Altain chain in Scythia, was the great hive of

human race is an undisputed truth in history. So Moses speaks of the

giant race in Genesis chapter VI. v. 2 and 4. “And there were giants in

the earth in those days, and also after that. And when the sons of God

saw the daughters of men fair, they took them to wives, of all which

they chose.”

And again: “when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and

they bare children to them, the same became mighty men, which were of

old, men of renown”.

[17] The whole of this chapter abounds in onomatopoeian alliterations,

and is more a play upon words than display of sense. It is interesting

however, for these jingling words in the language, as also for the

names of the warlike weapons in use among the ancients.

[18] Notwithstanding the reward of heavenly abodes promised to the

slayer and slain in war, in the Sástra and Koran, the Asiatics are far

backward now-a-days, both to kill and to be killed than the Europeans,

who are forbidden by the Holy writ, to slay and shed human blood. Thus

there is a laxity of the injunction and prohibition on both sides.

[19] P. mujosi S. Yátudhána, H. Jádugar = juggler.

[20] The battle ground is compared firstly with the sky, then with the

sea, next with a forest, and lastly with the last dooms-day.

[21] It was easy for the lively Lílá, to learn about these peoples and

their native lands in her lonely Yoga meditation, by the help of the

goddess of learning; but it is hard for us to identify them without

subjecting ourselves to a long labour of love, which is a sort of Yoga

also, called _vidya Yoga_, or intense application and self devotion to

learning.

[22] Note. It is not easy to say, whether this continuation and lengthy

description of the warfare, is Vasishtha’s or Válmíki’s own making;

both of them being well acquainted with military tactics: the former

having been the general of King Sudása against the Persians, and the

latter the epic poet of Ráma’s wars with Rávana in the celebrated

Ramáyana.

These descriptions are left out in the vernacular translations of this

work as entirely useless in Yoga philosophy, without minding, that they

formed the preliminary step to Ráma’s military education, which he was

soon after called to complete under the guidance of Viswámitra in the

hermitage.

[23] I have always thought the Daivástras or superhuman arms, described

in the Ramáyana and Mahábhárata epics, as a display of pyrotechnic

contrivances much in use in early warfare. Or they may have been some

kinds of electric, hydraulic, pneumatic and steam engines emitting

gusts of fire, water, wind and smoke in the field of war. Halhead in

his Gentoo Laws, tells them to be shot from a kind of cross-bow used by

the Crusadiers of old.

[24] He was formerly an inhabitatnt of Kánya Kubjya, North Western

Provinces, India. He being invited on an occasion of a ceremony (yajna)

by Ádisura, Rájá of Gour Bengal, paid a visit at his court on Thursday

12th Kartick (October-November) Sakábda 994 (Tenth-Eleventh Century

A.D.), and on his request he settled there and became the founder of

Gour Mitra Family, at Maldah in Bengal.

[25] Barisá, Twenty four Pargannahs, District Alipur, Bengal.

[26] Báli. Boro Pargunah, District Hugli.

[27] Bágbázar, Calcutta.