An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition by F. W. Bain
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F. W. Bain >> An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition
AN ESSENCE OF THE DUSK
_Love turns venom, now I see,
Flouted Beauties vipers be._
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT
BY
F.W. BAIN
DEDICATED TO THE OTHER SEX.
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 gods had upchurned the nectar, the delectable
Butter of the Brine, Rahu'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," 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 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 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 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 Minar. 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 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 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 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 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, _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 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 _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 passion,
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 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 _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 gods
and old ruins, former births, second sight, and idealism: it falls back,
unconsciously mesmerised, under the spell of forgotten creeds.
POONA,
_April, 1906._
CONTENTS.
I. A HAUNTED BEAUTY
II. A TOTAL ECLIPSE
III. A FATAL KISS
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 god 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 glassy 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 passed without birth straight over into another
body. Moreover, he will resemble his ancestor, and the god 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 God 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 assonance is precisely in the vein of the
original.
[3] This name (pronounce Aj- to rhyme with _trudge_)
meaning both _unborn_ and _a goat_, is a name of the sun
(who was a goat in Assyria), the soul, Brahma, Wishnu,
Shiwa, the God 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 grass, 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: Anticipate 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.
[6] Still the name of Marwar.
So as he drew near it, he saw a crowd upon its wall. And when he was
distant from it but a little way, suddenly its great gate's mouth was
thrown open, and a stream of people shot from it like a long tongue, and
rapidly came towards him, so that he said to himself: Ha! then, as it
seems, I am expected by the citizens of this delightful city, who are as
eager to come to me as I am to get to them. And they came closer,
clamouring and buzzing as it were like bees; and he looked and lo! they
were all women, and there was not a man among them all. And as he
wondered, they ran up, and reached him, and threw themselves upon him
like a wave of the sea, laughing and crying, and drowning him in their
embraces: and they took him as it were captive, and swept him away
towards the city, all talking at once, and deafening him with their
joyful exclamations, paying not the least attention to anything that he
tried to say. And Aja let himself go, carried away by all those women
like a leaf in a rushing stream. And he said to himself, in
astonishment: What is this great wonder? For all these women fight for
me, as if they had never seen a man in their lives before. Where then
can the men be, to whom they must belong? Or can it be, that I have come
to a city composed of women without a man? Have I escaped the desert,
only to be drowned in a sea of women? For what is the use of a single
man, in an ocean of the other sex? Or are they dragging me away to offer
me up to the Mother[7], having sacrificed all their own husbands
already? Or have I really died in the desert, and is all this only a
dream of the other world? Can these be the heavenly Apsarases, come in a
body to fetch me away, as if I had fallen in battle? Surely they are,
for some of them are sufficiently beautiful even for Indra's hall. And
anyhow, it is better to be torn to pieces by beautiful women, even if
there are far too many, than to die in the desert, all alone.
[7] Durga or Parwati.
So as they bore him along, chattering on like jays and cranes, he said
again to the women next him: Fair ones, who are you, and where are you
taking me, and why in the world are you so greatly delighted to see me?
And then at last, they replied: O handsome stranger, ask nothing: very
soon thou shalt know all, for we are carrying thee away to our King. And
Aja said to himself: Ha! So, then, there is a King. These women have,
after all, a King. Truly, I am fain to see him, this singular King of a
female city. And weak as he was, he began to laugh, as they all were
laughing: and so they all surged on like a very sea of laughter, through
the gates of the city, and along the streets within, till they came at
last to the King's palace. And all the way, Aja looked, and there was
not to be seen so much as the shadow of a man in all the streets, which
overflowed with women like the channel of a river in the rainy season.
Then the guards of the palace doors, who were also women, took him, and
led him in; and all the women who had brought him crowded in behind.
And they mounted stairs, and after a while, they entered at last a great
hall, whose pillars of alabaster were reflected in its dark green
crystal floor, giving it the semblance of a silent pool in which a
multitude of colossal swans had buried their necks beneath the water.
And there Aja found himself in the presence of the King.
And instantly, all the women screamed together: Victory to thee,
Maharaja! for here have we brought thee another husband for thy lovely
daughter. And Aja started. And he said to himself: Another husband! How
many husbands, then, has this strange King's daughter got already? Has
she an insatiable thirst for husbands, whose number I am brought to
swell? So as he stood reflecting, the King leaped from his throne, and
came towards him. And as Aja looked at him, he was seized with amazement
greater than before. For the King resembled a very incarnation of the
essence of grief, yet such, that it was difficult to behold him without
laughter, as if the Creator had made him to exhibit skill in combining
the two. For his long thin hair was pure white, as if with sorrow, and
his eyes were red, as if with weeping, and great hollow ruts were
furrowed in his sunk and withered cheeks, as if the tears had worn
themselves channels in which to run. And though he was tall, he was
bent and old, as if bowed down by a load of care. And he tried, as if in
vain, to smile, as he said in a mournful voice that quavered and
cracked: O man, whoever thou art, long have I waited for thee, and glad
indeed I am to see thee, and inclined to dance like a peacock at the
sight of a rainy cloud.
And as he gazed upon the King, Aja was seized with sudden laughter that
would not be controlled: saying within himself: Much in common they have
between them, a dancing happy peacock, and this doleful specimen of a
weeping King! And he laughed, till tears ran down his cheeks also, as if
in imitation of those of the King. And when at last he could speak, he
said: O King, forgive me. For I am very weak, and have come within a
little of dying in the desert. And I laughed from sheer exhaustion, and
for joy to see in thy person as it were the warrant of my escape from
death. Give me food, and above all, water, if thou wouldst not have me
die at thy feet. And afterwards, show me, if thou wilt, thy daughter, to
whom, as it seems, I am to be married, whether I will or no. And the
King said: O thou model of the Creator's cunning in the making of man,
thy hilarity is excused. Food thou shalt have, and water, and
everything else thou canst require, and that immediately. But as for my
daughter, there she is before thee. And she could teach dancing even to
Tumburu himself[8].
[8] A Ghandarwa, or heavenly musician, and the dancing
master of the Apsarases. [Pronounce tum- to rhyme with
_room_, rather short.]
III.
And then, as the laughter surged again in Aja's soul, saying within
himself: Out on this pitiable old scarecrow of a King, whose only
thought is dancing! the King turned, and stood aside. And Aja looked,
and instantly, the laughter died out of his heart, which ceased as it
were to beat. And he murmured to himself: Ha! this is the most wonderful
thing of all. King and women and desert and all vanished out of his
mind, as if the sentiment that suddenly seized it filled it so
completely as to leave room for nothing else. And he stood still gazing,
feeling as though he were spinning round, though he was standing still
as death. For there before him stood this enigmatical King's daughter.
And like her father, she also seemed an incarnation of the soul of
grief, not as in his case ignominious, and an object of derision, but
rather resembling a heavenly drug, compounded of the camphor of the cold
and midnight moon, that had put on a fragrant form of feminine and fairy
beauty to drive the world to sheer distraction, half with love and half
with woe. For like the silvery vision of the newborn streak of that Lord
of Herbs, she was slender and pale and wan, formed as it seemed of some
new strange essence of pure clear ice and new dropt snow, and she loomed
on the soul of Aja out of the blackness of his trance like a large white
drooping lily, just seen in the gloom of an inky night. And her hair and
brow were the colour of a thunder-cloud in the month of Chaitra[9], and
like that cloud, the heavy sorrow hung in her great dark mournful eyes,
drenching him as it were with a shower of dusky dreamy dewy beauty, and
drawing him down bewitched and lost like the victim of a haunted pool
into the snaky eddy of their silent unfathomable recess. And yet her
deep red lips trembled, as it were on the very border of a smile, as if
they were hinting against their will of a mine of laughter and subtle
snares that they were not allowed to use. And she had risen up to come
and meet him, yet was hanging back as if reluctant, and so she stood,
all reflected in the polished floor, with her head thrown back to look
at him, for she was very small, like one on the very point of imploring
help, yet shrinking, as if too proud to ask it from a stranger, balanced
as it were between reliance on her own pure and pleading beauty and
doubtfulness of its reception. So she halted irresolute, with glorious
throat that was hovering still over the swell of her lifted breasts,
poised as it were on the very verge of tumultuous oscillation, like that
of Rati, preparing with timidity to cast herself at the feet of the
three-eyed God, to beg back the body of her burned-up husband in a
passion of love-lorn tears.