More generally known, perhaps, than any other Hindoo legend, is the
story of the demon, RÁHU, who brings about ECLIPSES, by devouring the
Sun and Moon. For when the gods had upchurned the nectar, the delectable
Butter of the Brine, Ráhu's mouth watered at the very sight of it: and
"in the guise of a god" he mingled unperceived among them, to partake.
But the Sun and Moon, the watchful Eyes of Night and Day, detected him,
and told Wishnu, who cast at him his discus, and cut his body from his
head: but not until the nectar was on the way down his throat. Hence,
though the body died, the head became immortal: and ever since, a thing
unique, "no body and all head," a byword among philosophers, he takes
revenge on Sun and Moon, the great Taletellers, by "gripping" them in
his horrid jaws, and holding on, till he is tired, or can be persuaded
to let go. Hence, in some parts of India, the doleful shout of the
country people at eclipses: _Chor do! chor do[1]!_ and hence, also, the
primary and surface meaning of our title: _A Digit of the Moon in the
Demon's grip_: in plain English, _an eclipse of the moon_. And yet,
legend though it be, there is something in the old mythological way of
putting the case, which describes the situation in eclipses, far better
than our arid scientific prose. I shall not easily forget, how, as we
slid like ghosts at midnight, through the middle of the desert, along
the Suez Canal[2], I watched the ghastly pallor of the wan unhappy moon,
as the horrible shadow crept slowly over her face, stealing away her
beauty, and turning the lone and level sands that stretched away below
to a weird and ashy blue, as though covering the earth with a sepulchral
sympathetic pall. For we caught the "griesly terror," Ráhu, at his
horrid work, towards the end of May, four years ago.
[1] _Let go! let go!_
[2] Though nothing can be less romantic than a canal,
gliding through that of Suez is a strange experience at
night. Your great ship seems to move, swift and noiseless,
through the very sand: and if only you could get there
without knowing where you were, you would think that you
were dreaming.
But our title has yet another meaning underneath the first, for _Ahi_,
the name employed for Ráhu (like all other figures in Indian mythology,
he is known by many names), also means a _snake_. _Beauty persecuted by
a snake_ is the subject of the story. That story will presently explain
itself: but the relation between _Ráhu_, or eclipses, and a snake is so
curiously illustrated by a little insignificant occurrence that happened
to myself, that the reader will doubtless forgive me for making him
acquainted with it.
Being at Delhi, not many years ago, I seized the opportunity to visit
the Kutub Minár. There was famine in the land. At every station I had
passed upon the way were piled the hides of bullocks, and from the train
you might see their skeletons lying, each one bleaching where it died
for want of fodder, scattered here and there on the brown and burning
earth; for even every river bed was waterless, and not a single blade of
green could you descry, for many hundred miles. And hence it came about,
that as I gazed upon the two emaciated hacks that were to pull me from
the station, a dozen miles out, and as many more back, I could bring
myself to sit behind them only by the thought that thereby I should save
them from a load far greater than my own, that would have been their
fate on my refusal. Therefore we started, and did ultimately arrive, in
the very blaze of noon.
The Kutub Minár is a needle of red stone, that rises from a plain as
flat as paper to a height of two hundred and fifty feet; and you might
compare it, as you catch, approaching, glimpses of it at a distance, to
a colossal chimney, a Pharos, or an Efreet of the Jinn. The last would
be the best. For nothing on the surface of the earth can parallel the
scene of desolation which unrols itself below, if you climb its 380
steps and look out from the dizzy verge: a thing that will test both the
muscle of your knees and the steadiness of your nerves. Round you is
empty space: look down, the pillar bends and totters, and you seem to
rock in air; you shudder, you are falling; and away, away below, far as
the eye can carry, you see the dusty plain, studded with a thousand
tombs and relics of forgotten kings. There is the grim old fortress of
the Toghlaks: there is the singular observatory of the rájá astronomer,
Jaya Singh: and there the tomb, Humaioon's tomb, before which Hodson,
Hodson the brave, Hodson the slandered, Hodson the unforgotten, sat, for
two long hours, still, as if man and horse were carved in stone, with
the hostile crowd that loathed and feared him tossing and seething and
surging round him, waiting for the last Mogul to come out and be led
away. The air is thick, and sparkles with blinding dust and glare, and
the wind whistles in your ears. Over the bones of dynasties, the hot
wind wails and sobs and moans. Aye! if a man seeks for melancholy, I
will tell him where to find it--at the top of the old Kutub Minár.
And then, that happened which I had foreseen. We had not gone a mile
upon our homeward way, when one of the horses fell. Therefore,
disregarding the asseverations of my rascally Jehu that the remaining
animal was fully equal to the task alone, I descended, and proceeded on
foot. But a ten mile walk on the Delhi plain in the hottest part of the
day is not a thing to be recommended. After plodding on for about two
hours, I was, like Langland, "wery forwandred," and went me to rest, not
alas! by a burnside, but in the shadow of one of the innumerable little
tombs that stand along the dusty road. There I lay down and fell asleep.
Nothing induces slumber like exertion under an Indian sun. When I
awoke, that sun was setting. A little way before me, the yellow walls of
Delhi were bathed in a ruddy glow; the minarets of the Great Mosque
stood out sharp against the clear unspotted amber sky. And as I watched
them, I suddenly became aware that I was myself observed with interest
by a dusky individual, who was squatted just in front of me, and who
rose, salaaming, when he saw that I was awake. It appeared that I had,
so to say, fallen into a "nest of vipers;" that I had unwittingly
invaded the premises of a snake dealer, who, no doubt for solid reasons,
had made my friendly tomb the temporary repository of his
stock-in-trade.
The Indian snake charmer, _gáruda, hawadiga_[3], or whatever else they
call him, is as a rule but a poor impostor. He goes about with one
fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling
at the end of a string. My dweller in tombs was richer than all his
tribe in his snakes, and in his eyes. I have never seen anybody else
with real cat's eyes: eyes with exactly that greenish yellow luminous
glare which you see when you look at a cat in the dark. They gleamed and
rolled in the evening sun, over a row of shining teeth, as their owner
squatted down before me, liberating one after another from little bags
and baskets an amazing multitude of snakes, which he fetched in batches
from the interior of the tomb, till the very ground seemed alive with
them[4]. Some of them he handled only with the greatest respect, and by
means of an iron prong. Outside the Zoo (where they lose in effect) I
never saw so many together before: and it is only when you see a number
of these reptiles together that you realise what a strange uncanny
being, after all, is a snake: and as you watch him, lying, as it were,
in wait, beautiful exceedingly, but with a beauty that inspires you with
a shudder, his eyes full of cruelty and original sin, and his tongue of
culumny and malice, you begin to understand his influence in all
religions. I was wholly absorbed in their snaky evolutions, and buried
in mythological reminiscences, when my _gáruda_ roused me suddenly, by
saying: _Huzoor_, look!
[3] _Háwa_, in Canarese, is the name of Ráhu.
[4] I did not count them, but there were several dozen,
nearly all different. I have reason to believe that this
man must have been one of the disciples of a former very
celebrated snake charmer, who was known all over India.
He leaned over, and administered with his bare hand a vicious dig to a
magnificent hamadryad, that lay coiled upon itself in its open basket.
The creature instantly sat up, with a surge of splendid passion,
hissing, bowing, and expanding angrily its great tawny hood. The
_gáruda_ put his _púngi_ to his lips, and blew for a while upon it a low
and wheezy drone,--the invariable prelude to a little _jadoo_, or black
art,--which the beautiful animal appeared to appreciate: and then,
pointing with the end of his pipe to the "spectacles" on its hood, he
said, with that silky, insinuating smile which is characteristic of the
scamp: _Huzoor, dekho, namas karta_[5]:--
_Nágki phani, chánd ka dúkh
Uski badi, áp ka súkh_[6].
[5] _See, he makes obeisance._
[6] Which we may roughly render: _Hood of snake brings joy
and rue, this to moon and that to you._ In all Oriental
saws, jingle counts for much.
I did not understand his lunar allusion, but, judging that his rhyming
gibberish, like that of the rascally priests in Apuleius, was a
carefully prepared oracle of general application, kept in stock for the
cozening of such prey as myself, I repeated to him my favourite Hindu
proverb[7], and gave him, in exchange for his benevolent cheque on the
future, a more commonplace article of present value, which led to our
parting on the most amicable terms. But I did him injustice, perhaps.
Long afterwards, having occasion to consult an astronomical chart, with
reference to this very story, all at once I started, and in an instant,
the golden evening, the walls of Delhi, and my friend of the many snakes
and sinister eyes, suddenly rose up again into my mind. For there,
staring at me out of the chart, was the mark on the cobra's head. It is
the sign still used in modern astronomy for "the head and tail of the
dragon," the nodes indicating the point of occultation, the symbol of
eclipse.
[7] "_Tulsi, in this world hobnob with everybody: for you
never know in what guise the deity may present himself._"
In the original it is a rhyming stanza.
What then induced or inspired the _gáruda_ to connect me with the moon?
Was it really black art, divination, or was it only a coincidence?
Reason recommends the latter alternative: and yet, the contrary
persuasion is not without its charm. Who knows? It may be, that the soul
grows to its atmosphere as well as the body, and living in a land where
dreams are realities, and all things are credible, and history is only a
fairy tale: the land of the moon and the lotus and the snake, old gods
and old ruins, former births, second sight, and idealism: it falls back,
unconsciously mesmerised, under the spell of forgotten creeds.