Though the old literature of the Hindoos is deficient in the department
of politics--it has no history, no orators, no Demosthenes, no
Polybius, no Aristotle; for the dialectic of politics appears to have
been invented by the divinely discontented Greek--though, I say, it has
no politics, it is permeated with policy. The ancients, says
Aristotle, wrote politically, but we rhetorically: and his remark is
admirably illustrated by _e.g._ the old _Panchatantra_, whose author
certainly had in him as much policy as Thucydides, although he chose to
deliver his wisdom in apologues, rather than in the prosaic and
somewhat pedantic photography of actual affairs. The Hindoo term,
_níti_, means, not so much policy, as diplomacy, and so their
_níti-shastra_, or doctrine of policy, refers rather to the clever
conduct of affairs in negotiation, than to anything else. And
therefore, love-affairs, which we should hardly include under politics,
fall in with the Hindoo conception, and in this sense women are, as the
Hindoos think, and their annals abundantly testify, at least the
equals, in policy, of men. When the author of _Eothen_ commended
certain women of the Ægæan isles for their admirable [Greek: politiue],
he was using the term exactly in the sense of _níti_. And this
correlation of diplomacy and love is the substance of the present
story, the story of a love-affair, in which, if we may believe a great
authority, the poet-king, Bhartrihari, the special quality required and
exhibited is craft. The Hindoos in fact resemble women, and women the
Hindoos, in this particular, that they are both of them apt to identify
policy with craft, and like rivers, generally prefer to reach desired
ends by crooked ways: and this is why both of them, though often very
dexterous negotiators (like Wellington's "Old Brag," whom he thought
superior to Talleyrand), have too much _finesse_ to make really solid
statesmen. For intrigue may be good, in war, and it may be good, in
love, but it is not good, save in a subordinate and secondary sense, in
state-affairs. Nothing durable was ever built upon it. Strength is
simple, but cunning is the weapon of the weak: and there is probably
more consummate "policy," _i.e._ diplomacy and tact, exhibited by women
in the conduct of their love-affairs in every century, than has ever
been displayed by men on the great stage of politics in the whole of
human history.
And though the title of our story, _A Mine of Faults_, might lead the
reader to expect, not without alarm, something geological and mineral,
and hard, and stony, it really plays lightly with a somewhat softer
substance, which only disconsolate lovers in the depth of their
dejection ever venture to compare with rocks or flints--a woman. For
here, as usual, the Sanskrit epithet conveys two meanings in one word:
being, in one sense, a poetic synonym of the Moon: the _maker of eve_,
the _lender of beauty to the dusk_: while, according to the other, it
means a _mine_, or inexhaustible store, of _blemishes_, _defects,_ or
_faults_. And thus, as applied to a particular digit of the moon, that
is, a lovely woman, it keeps the mind ambiguously hovering between her
lustrous lunar beauty, and her _faiblesse_:[1] the malicious
implication being, that she owes her attraction as much to her weakness
as her beauty: a paradox, to which the modern world, anxious about the
suffrage, seems disposed to turn at present a deaf ear. Dogmatism, on
such a subject, would be dangerous and unbecoming: yet it would not be
easy to deny that her faults and imperfections, even if they do not
determine the attraction of the _vas infirmius_,[2] at least do not
diminish, but increase it. _Infida, sed pulchra_, said the ancient of
his mistress: who knows, whether she would have been quite so lovely in
his eyes, had she been true? A doubt, or dispute, about possession
lends value to the property, in every loser's eyes: and doubtless
jealousy, while it diminishes and tarnishes affection, increases charm.
And indeed, no philosopher has ever told us exactly what it is that
excites the passion of the lover to his "most emphatic she." Take any
man you will, and you will find that ninety-nine women in a hundred
will leave him unelectrified, unmoved: the next, a very mine of faults,
inferior, to every other eye than his, to her ninety-nine ineffectual
sisters, will nevertheless act upon him so, that her very presence will
send the blood rushing into his face--
Up his cheek the colour sprang,
Then he heard,
and for her sake, it may be, he will cast into the fire his family, his
friends, his property, his honour, or his life, or whatever else is or
is not his to cast. No analysis will discover to you the secret of the
charm. And yet, let no man rashly call him mad, for is not every lover
mad, and does not this touch of Nature make the whole world kin? Only,
each requires somewhat different ingredients, to make up that
particular _mass of imperfections_ that appeals to him. Who but a fool
would fall in love with faults? Ah! but Nature, or as the old Hindoos
would say, the Creator is so cunning; so well he knows how, by some
almost imperceptible distinction, some unanalysable curve or touch or
grain of composition, nay, by a spot, a fleck, a blemish, an
irresistible defect, a "mole cinque-spotted," on the body or the soul,
to turn even the sage into a fool. Explain it as we may, it is not
perfection that has inspired the great passions of the world. Unless,
indeed, anyone should choose to say, that perfection consists precisely
in a mass of imperfections--and then he would agree with the author of
this tale: the Moony-Crested God.
Being at Bombay, by accident, a little while ago, I went down to the
harbour, as my custom is, to find a boat. But as it happened, such a
gale was blowing from the east, that not a boat would come. They were
all cowering, as it were, huddled together on the lee side of the quay,
dancing madly on the tossing waves, like corks. Here, however, as long
ago in the case of the Macedonian Philip, silver arguments prevailed:
and at last I put forth "in the teeth of the hard glad weather, in the
blown wet face of the sea," with feelings which those only can
appreciate who love the sea beyond all earthly things, and live away
from it against their will. So, then, we fared on in the eye of the
wind, tacking to and fro, and shipping half the water that we met. The
race is very strong, in Bombay harbour, at the turn of the tide, in
rough weather; we were crossing it aslant, and in the turmoil, our
"patron" made a blunder with the tiller, which drew down upon his grey
hairs such a storm of execration from his crew, who were baling for
dear life, that in his confusion he lost his head and very nearly ended
all. We got across, however, but the violence of the wind made it
after all utterly impossible to make the north coast of Elephanta,
where the landing-stage is, and therefore I had to land where I could,
upon the south.
I wandered through the woody isle, startling equally the monkeys, and
the men who were constructing a new battery on the apex of the hill;
who, taking my method of arrival, with the weather, into view, were
strongly inclined, as I imagine, to consider me a Russian spy.[3] But
finally that came about, which I had foreseen: when I reached the cave,
for once I had it to myself. The weather had effectually protected it
from all intrusion but my own: and those bands of pleasure seekers, who
make it a place of horror and defilement, and desecrate its holy
solitude, were missing. About it, and in it, was no noise whatever but
the noise of the wind.
I went into the cave, and sat down, at the feet of Deity, close beside
the shrine. It was growing late, for we had taken long to come, and
dusk was beginning to settle over its dark interior recesses, making
its projections stand out strongly in the gloom. Just before me was
the Marriage of Shiwa and Párwatí, dim and huge, upon the wall: the
gigantic figure of the Great God, holding by the hand, to lead her
round the sacred fire, the Daughter of the Mountain, whose attitude is
a triumph of artistic skill: coy, bashful, and reluctant, with averted
head, she seems as though unwilling to place her hand in his, to gain
whom she had endured so many self-inflicted tortures. And a little way
off, in the darkness, I could just discern the colossal Trimúrti, the
three-headed bust of Shiwa, whose central countenance is filled with
such majestic, beautiful, immense repose: divine, immortal calm. And
all round me stood about, here and there, huge Dwarapálas, Pisháchas,
grinning Kirttmukhas demons and lesser deities, satellites and servers
and ministers of the Moony-Crested God.
And as I sat, so little, among those great Shadows, with the darkness
growing deeper, in the silence, was it fancy, or did they whisper to
one another: Who is this strange white-faced unbeliever, who sits alone
among us, as if half out of devotion, yet without the flowers, and the
water, and the camphor, and the lamps, and the mantras, and all the
other customary rites?
And I said in a whisper: O Moony-Crested, be not angry: for surely I
was thy worshipper of old, in some forgotten former birth. And even
now, is there among thy dusky millions, even one, who has so sincere a
regard for thy dead divinity, and for that of thy delicious little
snowy bride, as I? And at least I worship with true devotion the digit
of the moon, that shines in thy tawny tangled hair.
So I made peace with those old ghosts, and we sat together in the
darkness, and their Lord put a thought into my heart, as I gazed at
him, while Bombay seemed to have faded away into another world.
And then, after a while, I got up: and I bowed to my Companions, and
went away. The wind had dropped, and blew us gently home. Night had
fallen, before we reached the quay: lights and shadows came and went on
the quiet water, dimpling round the tired boat. I stepped out, and
disappeared in the motley crowd of English ladies, native coolies,
Christians, pagans, Musulmans, Parsees, negroes, Arab horse-dealers,
British sailors, and all the other national ingredients that it takes
to make Bombay.
MAHABLESHWAR,
_May_, 1909.
[1] There is yet a third application, to the book itself, indicative of
the modesty of the author, with respect to the merits of his production.
[2] The ordinary Sanskrit term for woman is the exact equivalent, and
may possibly be the origin, of this mediæval label, in which we detect
homage and fear lurking under the disparagement.
[3] As I subsequently gathered from my friend, the gallant officer in
control, I ought to have been shot, hanged, or otherwise destroyed, for
being there at all.