MANDU IN MALWA
Late in the evening of the same day that he had left the height,
Oman appeared at the door of Poussa’s hut; and found that the years
had changed it little. Poussa, now a woman of some authority in the
village, though she was not yet thirty, received him with joyful
acclaim, and with a reverence that she gave neither to the head-man
nor to the priest of her community. She feasted him on rice and curry,
millet bread, dried fruits, and sweetmeats, and gave him to drink out
of a jar of mellow (not too precious) wine. They ate alone, he and she;
and he slept the whole night in her hut before she deigned to acquaint
the village that the great hermit was among them.
Oman, who had expected to spend the next day at the loom, to pay his
debt of food to Poussa, found himself, instead, a centre of attraction
to the whole village, and was obliged to submit, for a matter of twelve
hours, to the entertainment of the chief citizens of the hamlet, and
as many visitors as had time to reach him that day. At dusk he was
borne to the room of the gods in an old palanquin, carried on the
shoulders of eager Vaisyas. And there a sacrifice was conducted, and
Soma was drunk, and fires were lighted in the council square. They also
demanded of him an address; and Oman talked, preaching a little of his
own creed, couched in the simplest language. His audience, accustomed,
like all Hindoos, to thoughts of the broadest abstraction, gave close
attention, and, getting his meaning, approved it, because of the
novelty of his ideas. Later he was borne back, triumphant, to Poussa’s
hut.
That night Oman could not sleep for very joy. Here at last was—success.
At last men had given him free right of brotherhood, and more. He had
known the respect, the reverence, of his own kind. By a miracle, the
outcast was become the acclaimed among men. The cost of it, those
bitter years of loneliness and despair, was not counted now. Oman knew
only that he was welcome, was honored among the people; and his heart
went out to them in praise and thanksgiving.
Nevertheless, he stayed only a day longer in this mountain hamlet. His
departure was not easy. Through Poussa it had become known that he
was Brahman-born; and immediately a post as second priest was offered
him by Nala himself. Here Oman might have ended his days, universally
revered and beloved. But Fate was pulling at his sleeve. The yearning
for the dreamland, the land of the Ruby, had not left him; and his
heart told him that it actually existed, while Fate whispered in his
ear, bidding him go find it. Thus, obedient to the voice, he said
farewell to his new friends, detached Poussa’s clinging hands from his
knees, smoothed the rough hair back from her face, pressed his lips to
her brow, and then set off, alone, into the jungle.
Now began his period of wandering:—the long progress through the
Vindhyas, which occupied many months. It was not a time of suffering.
Long inured to the greatest hardships of the body, neither fatigue nor
hunger dismayed him, nor did the mountain woods and ravines hold for
him any terror. The animals of the wild would not molest him. Indeed,
he encountered singularly few. The winter weather was pleasant; the
sun’s rays mild. With a stout wooden staff in his hand, he journeyed
leisurely, halting at any villages he came to, finding welcome and
acclaim wherever he arrived; for his appearance proclaimed his
estate. It became his regular custom to preach in the market-place;
and he never lacked an audience. Perhaps from the memory of Hushka,
perhaps out of the depths of his own solitude, he had drawn a kind
of picturesque eloquence that rushed upon him as he began his talks,
and drew his listeners to him like a magnet. An Indian will listen to
any fantastic creed, interest himself in any philosophy, nor deem it
heresy to his million gods. It is, with him, either the instinctive
knowledge that Truth in any form is good; or else, and more probably,
a kind of inconsequential, dreamer’s grasping of all happily expressed
maxims that bear the stamp of understanding. At this time, Oman made no
attempt to get to the root of his success. It was enough for him that
it existed. Joy walked with him on the road; and the stimulus of his
popularity seemed to know no reaction.
Fortunately, he never felt any desire to take up a permanent abode in
these mountain towns. Some of them were of fair size, boasted of a
petty ruler, and had some military force. Many had open offices for
such as he, where he might have taken a place of rank. Almost all were
set in surroundings of great natural beauty, calculated to appeal
strongly to Oman’s inbred love of nature. But he never entertained the
least idea of settling in one of them. His early purpose, vague as it
was, lay enshrined in his heart. He was a pilgrim to the land of vision
and memory: a high and holy place, peopled with ghosts of beloved
dead, a shrine that all twice-born love to carry in their hearts. For
months he hid his desire. He longed constantly to make inquiry of the
men among whom he passed, but he always hesitated, fearing to be taken
for a fool should he speak of a country the name of which he could not
tell, and no part of which he could definitely describe.
The winter months drew along pleasantly; but, with the coming of spring
and the thought of the hot weather, his restlessness and the vision in
his heart grew, till one day he was driven to speech. He was walking
through a narrow valley, a long strip of which had been recently
ploughed for the first time; and a man was at work there, sowing
millet. On the edge of the field Oman paused, till the farmer, bag at
belt, right arm working mechanically in and out, came slowly toward
him, and then halted.
“Fair spring and a rich crop to thee!” said Oman.
“Alas! It is too late in the year for a heavy crop! But a peaceful
journey to thee, reverend sir,” returned the man, civilly.
Then Oman, resolutely putting away his fears, began, in haste: “Friend,
I am seeking a far country:—a kingdom that lies on the edge of the
hills, high in the sunlight, while below it are a broad plain and a
great river. Canst thou tell me the name of such a place?”
The man looked at him, first surprised, and then puzzled, but not
asking a closer description. “A high kingdom,” he muttered, knitting
his brow. Oman’s chance words had caught his imagination. “Ah!
Perhaps—there is a plateau, lying five days’ journey to the west and
south, that is called Mandu—”
“Mandu! Mandu! It is the name! Churi said it! Tell me, stranger, tell
me again! The place lies west and south? A plateau! Thou hast been
there?”
The farmer shook his head. “Nay, I am newly come from the north. But
traders and mendicants have spoken of it. It is well known:—a Rajah’s
land. South of it, below, is the Narmáda, the holy stream. Doubtless
thou wouldst bathe there. But Mandu, I have been told, is to be reached
from the mountains by a causeway. Yes, I have heard much of that place.”
Oman’s face was alight, and he longed for money wherewith to repay
the man for his information. The farmer, however, expected no such
unusual thing as money out of a mendicant, and hoped for no more than
a blessing from this one, which he got. Then Oman passed on, his face
turned to the southwest.
For five days, and more than five, he journeyed toward the sunset. He
was all aflame with eagerness and delight; but he would ask his way no
more. He had a strange notion that it would be a shame to him were he
unable, now, to find the country of his heart’s desire; and he kept his
eagerness within himself, never allowing himself to say to any one the
words that burned on his lips: “I go south, to Mandu! To the plateau of
Mandu!” though the pride in him was almost too great to be restrained.
It had served him better, indeed, if he had put away his hesitancy.
For he was now in the region where all men knew Mandu, and he might
have saved himself a weary walk. At the end of six days’ journeying,
about the full-moon day of the Sravana month (March), he came to the
southern boundary of the Vindhyas, and, through an opening on the
slope, looked out over the Dekkhan. It was the first time in eleven
years that he had seen the plain; and there was joy in the sight,—but
anxiety also. For where was Mandu, high Mandu, “that stands on the
edge of the plain”? Had he come too far to the west, or was he yet too
near the rising sun? Fortunately, a little below him, on the hillside
above the flat land, he perceived a town, whither he directed his
steps, and there, because it was become a necessity, asked his way.
He was answered, readily, that Mandu was still a day’s journey to the
east; and he was furthermore given directions so minute, that, pausing
only to eat a piece of bread and drink some goat’s milk offered by a
hospitable peasant, he started again that same night, under the light
of the radiant moon. Again he took his way up into the hills, following
the course laid out for him, until, about dawn, he found a well-kept
roadway such as he had not before seen in the Vindhyas. And now, his
uncertainty banished at last, he lay down beside the road, in the
shadow of a pipal tree, to sleep.
When he awoke, it was noon. For a little while he lay still, puzzled
and thinking, for he had slept heavily. Suddenly it rushed upon him,
the great sense of finality. And, with a prayer in his heart, he rose
up, and took the road, starting southward at a rapid pace. The way
wound round and down, through a rocky gorge which he had a vague sense
of having passed through before. Then it began to re-ascend, and Oman’s
excitement grew. He felt that he was nearing the climax of his life. It
was just this that he had unconsciously waited for through the years.
And now it had come! At the top of the eminence the veiling trees
suddenly parted, and, in the flooding light of afternoon, he found
himself looking along the stone-built causeway that Rai-Khizar-Pál,
returning from triumphant war in the north, had crossed, with his
captives, thirty-one years before.
Faint, quick-breathing, Oman halted, leaning on his staff, to gaze
upon the scene. It appeared to him most natural, most right, that, at
this moment, with its familiar little whirring sound, a slender-winged
gray bird should come hovering up from the wood and seek shelter in
his breast. With the advent of this companion creature, his vision was
doubled. Twice before had he known this road. There had been a bride of
Dhár, and a captive from Delhi. The feelings of both were mingled in
him:—bitter pain, veiled joy, curiosity, hope, weariness. He saw the
bright pageants pass slowly before him; and then, leisurely, he moved
downward to the bridge.
All was exactly as it had been, thirty years before. From the
watch-towers the soldiers looked out and up into the hills, taking
no notice of the solitary, toil-worn mendicant who passed toward the
plateau. If they perceived the bird in his bosom, they only thought
him some dealer in magic who had trained the creature to be his
oracle. Nor, indeed, did Oman notice them. They were part of the whole
scene, but not to be singled out. His eyes rested on the fields that
stretched along beside two roads that wound, one to the right, the
other to the left, along the plateau. Which of the roads to choose, he
scarcely knew. Memory did not serve. The fields, already planted, were
empty; and he bethought himself that it was the time of the Sravana
ceremony, when all the people would be in the town, sacrificing and
celebrating in temple and bazaar. At a venture, he turned to the left,
and walked for some time past fertile rice-fields, and through a
patch of woodland; and all the while, as he went, his heart was full
to bursting, and his eyes were bright with tears. For he had come
home—home. This land was home. He knew the feel of it. The very air
was familiar to his cheek. The little sounds of animal and bird life
were as the sounds of childhood heard again after many years. A great
restfulness pervaded him. The tears that were in his eyes fell, slowly.
Then his heart swelled with a mighty prayer of joy and thanksgiving.
His way had been very long, very dark and dreary; but it was traversed
now. His struggle and his loneliness were over. Behind him lay the
wilderness, and all about him was the promised land.