GRANDEUR OF THE AIR-BORN KING.
Argument. Description of Dominions of the Air-born King, and the
Frailty of Worldly possessions.
Vasishtha continued:—It was on one occasion that I passed by that
(Dásúra’s) way in my invisible body, to bathe in the heavenly stream of
_mandákiní_ (milky way) in the etherial regions.
2. After my departure from that region by the way of the Pleiades
(saptarshi), I arrived to the spot where Dásúra dwelt on his high
Kadamba tree.
3. I came to listen to a voice proceeding from the hollow of the tree
in the forest, which was as charming as the buzzing of the bee,
fluttering about the bud of a lotus.
4. Attend my intelligent son! said he, to a narrative that I will
relate unto thee by way of a simile of worldly things, and it is
pleasant to hear.
5. There is a very powerful King renowned in all the three worlds for
his great prosperity. His name is Khottha or Air-produced, and able to
grasp the whole world. (Like the air whereof he was born. Kha, Khao and
Khavi yet un, is empty air in Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic, and Khali in
Persian and Urdu).
6. All the lords of the earth bend their heads lowly under his rule,
and bear the badge of their submission to him with as great an honour,
as poor men are proud to carry about a bright gem on the head.
7. He exulted in his valour and the possession of all kinds of
rarities, and there is no one in the three worlds, that is able to
bring him under his subjection.
8. His unnumbered acts and exploits, are fraught with successive pain
and pleasure; and they are as interminable as the continuous waves of
the sea.
9. No one has been able to check the prowess of that mighty brave by
force of fire or sword, as none hath ever been able to press the air or
wind in his hand.
10. Even the gods Indra, Upendra and Hara, have fallen short of
following his steps in his ambitious pursuits, and the splendid
inventions of his imagination.
11. With his triple form of the sátwika, rájasika and támasika
qualities, he encompasses the world, and is enabled to accomplish all
sorts of actions. (These are the qualities of goodness, moderation and
excess, or the three states of deficiency, mediocrity and excess of
moral acts, according to the text of Aristotelean Ethics. But I would
prefer to call them the positive, comparative and superlative virtues,
or rather the minimum, mean and maximum states of virtues).
12. He is born in the extensive vacuity (of the spirit of Brahma), with
his triple body as that of a bird (viz; the flesh and bones and the
feathers, and remains in vacuum as the air and the sound).
13. He has built a city in that unlimited space of the Universe, having
fourteen provinces (_chaturdasa Bhuvana_) (the planetary spheres), in
its triple divisions (tribhuvana) of the earth and regions above and
below it.
14. It is beautified with forests and groves and pleasure-lawns and
hills, and bounded by the seven lakes of pearly waters on all sides.
(The city signifies the earth and the lakes the seven oceans in it).
15. It is lighted by two lamps of hot and cooling light (the sun and
moon), which revolve above and below it in their diurnal and nocturnal
courses, as those of righteous and nefarious people. (The original
words, as the courses _divá_, and _nisácharas_ or the day and
nightfarers).
16. The king has peopled this great city of his with many selfmoving
bodies (animals), which move in their spheres quite ignorant of
themselves (_i.e._ of their origin, their course and their fates).
17. Some of these are appointed in higher and some in lower spheres,
and others move in their middle course; some destined to live a longer
time, and others doomed to die in a day (as the ephemerids).
18. These bodies are covered with black skins and hairs (as thatched
huts), and furnished with nine holes (as their doors or windows); which
are continually receiving in and carrying out the air to keep them
alive.
19. They are supplied with five lights of sensation and perceptions and
supported by three posts of the two legs and the back bone, and a frame
work of white bones for the beams and bamboo rafters. It is plastered
over with flesh as its moistened clay (or mud wall), and defended by
the two arms as latches on door way.
20. The Great king has placed his sentinel of the Yaksha of egoism as a
guard of this house; and this guard is as ferocious as a Bhairava in
dark (ignorance), and as timorous as a _Bhairava_ by the day (i.e.
egoism brags in ignorance, but flies before the day-light of reason).
21. The masters of these locomotive bodies, play many pranks in them,
as a bird plays its frolics in its own nest.
22. This triformed prince (the mind) is always fickle, and never steady
in any; he resides in many bodies and plays his gambles there with his
guard of egoism, and leaves one body for another at will, as a bird
alights from one branch upon another.
23. This fickle minded prince is ever changeful in his will; he resides
in one city and builds another for his future habitation.
24. Like one under the influence of a ghost, he stirs up from one place
and runs to another, as a man builds and breaks and rebuilds his aerial
castle at his hobby.
25. The Mind sometimes wishes to destroy its former frame and remove to
another, and effects its purpose at will.
26. It is produced again as the wave of the sea, after it had subsided
to rest; and it pursues slowly and gradually a different course in its
renewed course of life.
27. This prince sometimes repents of his own conduct and acts in his
new life, and then laments for his ignorance and miseries and knows not
what to do.
28. He is sometimes dejected by sorrow and at others elated by success,
like the current of a river, now going down in the hot season, and
again overflowing its banks in the rains.
29. This king is led by his hobbies like the waters of the sea by the
winds; it puffs and swells, falls and rises, runs fast and ceases to
flow at once as in a calm.