An Essence Of The Dusk.

by F. W. Bain.

PREFACE.

More generally known, perhaps, than any other Hindoo legend, is the story of the demon, RaHU, who brings about ECLIPSES, by devouring the Sun and Moon. For when the G.o.ds had upchurned the nectar, the delectable b.u.t.ter of the Brine, Rahu's mouth watered at the very sight of it: and "in the guise of a G.o.d" 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 t.i.tle: _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 Ca.n.a.l[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," Rahu, 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 t.i.tle has yet another meaning underneath the first, for _Ahi_, the name employed for Rahu (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 _Rahu_, or eclipses, and a snake is so curiously ill.u.s.trated 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 Minar. There was famine in the land. At every station I had pa.s.sed 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 Minar 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 s.p.a.ce: 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 raja 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 Minar.

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 a.s.severations 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, _garuda, 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 mult.i.tude 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 p.r.o.ng. 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 _garuda_ roused me suddenly, by saying: _Huzoor_, look!

[3] _Hawa_, in Canarese, is the name of Rahu.

[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 pa.s.sion, hissing, bowing, and expanding angrily its great tawny hood. The _garuda_ put his _pungi_ 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]:--

_Nagki phani, chand ka dukh Uski badi, ap ka sukh_[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 hobn.o.b 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 _garuda_ 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 G.o.ds and old ruins, former births, second sight, and idealism: it falls back, unconsciously mesmerised, under the spell of forgotten creeds.

POONA,

_April, 1906._

A Haunted Beauty.

I.

_May that triumphant Lord protect us, who as he stands in mysterious meditation, bathed in twilight, motionless, and ashy pale[1], with the crystal moon in his yellow hair, appears to the host of worshippers on his left, a woman, and to those on his right, a man._

[1] Being actually smeared with ashes. The G.o.d is of course Shiwa, and the allusion is to his _Ardhanari_, or half male, half female form.

There lived of old, on the edge of the desert, a raja of the race of the sun. And like that sun reflected at midday in the gla.s.sy depths of the Manasa lake, he had an image of himself in the form of a son[2], who exactly resembled him in every particular, except age. And he gave him the name of Aja, for he said: He is not another, but my very self that has conquered death, and pa.s.sed without birth straight over into another body. Moreover, he will resemble his ancestor, and the G.o.d after whom I have called him Aja[3]. So as this son grew up, his father's delight in him grew greater also. For he was tall as a _shala_ tree, and very strong, and yet like another G.o.d of Love: for his face was more beautiful than the face of any woman, with large eyes like lapis-lazuli, and lips like laughter incarnate: so that his father, as often as he looked at him, said to himself: Surely the Creator has made a mistake, and mixed up his male and female ingredients, and made him half and half. For if only he had had a twin sister, it would have been difficult to tell with certainty, which was which.

[2] This punning a.s.sonance is precisely in the vein of the original.

[3] This name (p.r.o.nounce Aj- to rhyme with _trudge_) meaning both _unborn_ and _a goat_, is a name of the sun (who was a goat in a.s.syria), the soul, Brahma, Wishnu, Shiwa, the G.o.d of Love, and others. It was also the name of Rama's grandfather.

And then, when Aja was eighteen, his father died. And immediately, his relations conspired against him, led by his maternal uncle. And they laid a plot, and seized him at night, and bound him when he was asleep: for they dared not attack him when he was awake, for fear of his courage and his prodigious strength. And they deliberated over him, as he lay bound, what they should do with him: and some of them were for putting him to death, then and there. But the prime minister, who was in the plot, persuaded them to let him live: saying to himself: In this way I shall make for myself a loophole of escape, in case he should ever regain his throne.

Then in the early morning, his uncle and his other relations took him away, and laid him bound on a swift camel. And mounting others, they hurried him away into the desert, going at full speed for hours, till they reached its very heart. And there they set him down. And they placed beside him a little water in a small skin, and a little bag of corn. And his uncle said: Now, O nephew, we will leave thee, alone with thy shadow and thy life in the sand. And if thou canst save thyself, by going away to the western quarter, lo! it is open before thee. But beware of attempting to return home, towards the rising sun. For I will set guards to watch thy coming, and I will not spare thee a second time.

And then, he set his left arm free, and laid beside him a little knife.

And they mounted their camels, and taking his, they flew away from him over the sand, like the shadow of a cloud driven by the western wind.

So when they were gone, Aja took the knife, and cut his bonds. And he stood up, and watched them going, till they became specks on the edge of the desert, and vanished out of his sight.

II.

Then he looked round to the eight quarters of the world, and he looked up into the sky. And he said to himself: There is my ancestor, alone above, and I am alone, below. And he put his two hands to his breast, and flung them out into the air. And he exclaimed: Bho! ye guardians of the world[4], ye are my witnesses. Thus do I fling away the past, and now the whole wide world is mine, and ye are my protectors. And I have escaped death by a miracle, and the craft of that old villain of a prime minister, whom I will one day punish as he deserves. And now it is as though I knew, for the very first time in all my life, what it was to be alive. Ha! I live and breathe, and there before me is food and water.

And now we will see, which is the stronger: Death in the form of this lonely desert, or the life that laughs at his menace as it dances in my veins. And little I care for the loss of my kingdom, now that my father is dead and gone. I throw it away like a blade of gra.s.s, and so far from lamenting, I feel rather as if I had been born again. Ha! it is good to be alive, even in this waste of sand. And he shouted aloud, and called out to the sun above him: Come, old Grandfather, thou and I will travel together across the sand. And yet, no. Thou art too rapid and too fierce to be a safe companion, even for one of thy own race. So thou shalt go before me, as is due to thee, and I will follow after.

[4] The _Lokapalas_, or regents of the world, often thus appealed to, are eight: Kubera, Isha, Indra, Agni, Yama, Niruti, Waruna, and Wayu: and they ride on a horse, a bull, an elephant, a ram, a buffalo, a man, a "crocodile," and a stag.

And then, he lay down on the sand, covering his head with his upper garment, and slept and waited all day long, till the sun was going down.

And then he rose, and eat and drank a very little, and taking with him his skin and corn, he walked on after the sun, which sank to his rest in the western mountain. But Aja followed him all night long, with the moon for his only companion. And as he went, he saw the bones of men and camels, lying along the sand, and grinning at him as it were with white and silent laughter, as though to say: Antic.i.p.ate thy fate: for but a little further on, and thou shalt be what we are now. But he went on with nimble feet, like one that hurries through the den of a sleeping hungry lion, till the sun rose at last behind him. And then again he lay down, and rested all day long, and started again at night. And so he proceeded for many days, till all his water and corn was gone. And as he threw away the skin, he set his teeth, and said: No matter. I will reach the end of this hideous sand, which like the dress of Draupadi[5], seems to roll itself out as I go across it, though I should have to go walking on long after I am dead.

[5] When she was lost in the gambling match, and Duhshasana tried to strip her, still as he pulled off one dress, another appeared below it, refusing to leave her naked.

And night after night he went on, growing every night a little weaker.

And then at last there came a night when as he toiled along with heavy steps that flagged as it were with loaded feet, faint with hunger and burning thirst, he said to himself: I am nearly spent, and now the end is coming near, either of the sand, or me. And then the sun rose behind him, and he looked up, and lo! it was reflected from the wall of a city before him, which resembled another sun of hope rising in the west to cheer him. And he rubbed his eyes, and looked again, saying to himself: Is it a delusion of the desert, to mock me as I perish, or is it really a true city? And he said again: Ha! it is a real city. And his ebbing strength came back to him with a flood of joy. And he stooped, and took up a little sand, and turned, and threw it back, exclaiming: Out upon thee, abode of death![6] Now, then, I have beaten thee, and thy victim will after all escape. And he hurried on towards the city, half afraid to take his eyes away from it for a single instant, lest it should disappear.