THE DESCENT OF THE SUN

[Sanskrit script]

A CYCLE OF BIRTH

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT.

BY

F. W. BAIN

[Sanskrit script]

'and in a dream I saw a lotus fallen from heaven'

THIRD EDITION.

James Parker and Co., 31 BEDFORD-STREET, STRAND, LONDON; AND 27 BROAD-STREET, OXFORD. 1906.

First Edition, 1903. Second Edition, 1903. Third Edition, 1906.

DEDICATED TO MARGARET.

INTRODUCTION.

Here is a fairy tale which I found in an old Hindoo manuscript.

As the title shows, it is a solar myth. Literally translated, its name is: The glory of the Going Down of the Sun. But this is only the exoteric, physical envelope of the inner, mystical meaning, which is: The Divine Lustre[1] of the Descent (Incarnation) of Him Who took Three Steps: i.e. Wishnu, or the Sun, the later Krishna, or Hindoo Apollo. And this epithet of the Sun is explained by the well-known passage in the Rig-Weda (I. 22. 17[2]), 'Three steps did Wishnu stride: thrice did he set down his foot.' A mythological expression for the rise, the zenith, and the set of the Sun. But the old magnificent simplicity of the Rig-Weda was perverted by subsequent Pauranik glosses; and Wishnu, according to the new legend, was said to have cheated his adversary, Bali, by striding, in his Dwarf Incarnation, over the three worlds. In our title, a different turn is given to the old idea, which we may express by saying that the steps commence, not with the rise, but the set of the Sun: his Going Down, his mysterious period of Darkness, his Rising again. This is the

inverted Race, or Cycle of the Sun, which so much exercised the mind of primitive man, and seemed to be a symbol of the mystery of Birth and Death.

And ours is a strange story; which seemed to the translator not unworthy of being clothed in an English dress, containing as it did so much in little bulk that, as the French say, donne à penser. Absolutely Hindoo in its form and spirit, it is for an Englishman full of associations, and instinct with that philosophical mythology, scraps and fragments of which are familiar to him in the story of the Fall and the poetry of Milton, in many an old fairy tale, in some touches of Pythagoras and Plato, and some old religious legends. Lux in tenebris: a dazzling light, in the most profound darkness: the night of the sun: a heavenly body, doomed to put on mortality and suffer for a period in this lower world of darkness, birth and death: in some such ways as these we may express its central idea. But for the reader not acquainted with Sanskrit it may be worth while to point out that there runs throughout it a veiled allegory which he would not be apt to detect, to the teaching of the Sánkhya Philosophy of Kapila, (who is older than Thales;) according to which it is the

duty of PURUSHA, the archetype of the spirit of man, the Primæval Male, to hunt for and pursue PRAKRITI, the feminine personification of material Nature, the Eternal Feminine, till he finds her: when instantly she disappears 'like an actress[3].' In this respect, the story somewhat recalls the Gita-Gowind of Jayadewa, which according to one school of interpreters, deals with the Soul, personified as the lovely Rádhá, in its search after the Divine. For among the Hindoos, the earthly and the heavenly love are always confounded.

And let not anyone suppose, that the lesson embodied in these pages is obsolete or dead in the India of to-day. I wrote the last lines of this translation late one evening, and I walked out in the dusk to the bridge across the river, about half a mile away. There was not a breath of air. It was a night as still as that which long ago Medea chose on which to work her spells: nothing moved save the twinkling stars; all below was plunged in sleep, every tree a picture, every leaf seemed carved in stone: only, every now and then, a flying fox burst screeching from a branch. And as I stood upon the bridge, I could hear a faint din of tom-toms coming from the distant city of the Peshwas. I looked westwards, up the river. The sun had set, leaving behind it a ruddy glare which faded higher up the sky into the darkness: and exactly on the confines of the colours, in that bath of nilalohita, that purple-red, which is a favourite epithet of the god Shiwa, hung, like a thing in a dream, the lovely streak of the new moon, one day old. All was

reflected in the still mirror of the broad sheet of water formed by the river Bund, or dam.

I turned round. On the eastern side, below the bridge, the river runs in disconnected pools. All was buried in dark and gloom. But about two hundred yards away, on the right bank, there was a red spot and leaping flames. They were burning on the bank a corpse, whose former owner had died of plague. For here in Poona it is now, as it was of old in the days of Homer, [Greek: aieì dè puraì nekúon kaíonto thameiaí ....]

Suddenly a voice said behind me: They burn well on a cold night. I looked round. Beside me stood a Hindoo, whose real name I do not think it lawful to mention. His white clothes were stained and splashed all over with red, for the Holi festival had left its mark on him.

Why, Wishwanáth, I said, what are you doing here? Or have you come, like me, merely dekhne ke wáste, to see the sun set, and 'eat air'?

Wishwanáth cast a careless glance at the sky. Yes, he said, it looks well from here: but then I have seen it so often. It was a new moon yesterday.

And very soon it will be old. Look, Wishwanáth, here is a strange thing. See, there on that side is the moon, following the sun to rest in a bath of fire, and they will both appear to-morrow all the better for it. But now, look down there. There is another thing passing away in the fire. But how will it be with that?

And I pointed to the burning pyre on the other side.

The Hindoo looked steadily at it for a moment, and then at me. It will be just the same, he said.

What! you think that that will come back again, like sun and moon?

He did not answer for a moment. Then he said slowly, in a low voice, as if speaking rather to himself than me: How should it not return? na jáyate mriyate wa kadáchit[4].

I looked at him, but said nothing. He continued to gaze steadily at the burning pyre, in silence, and I did the same. The flames were dying down: their work was done.

Metempsychosis, transmigration, everlasting incarnation and re-incarnation of the immortal soul in body after body, birth after birth: all Hindoo literature is but the kaleidoscopic reiteration of this one identical idea, whose beauty is such that no logic will ever destroy it or oust it in favour of another. For the Sanskrit language is a kind of shrine, consecrated to the embodiment and immortalisation of this philosophical myth. The Hindoos are possessed by it; it is their hereditary heirloom, Kramágatam, the legacy from an immemorial past: it is all that they have left. And nations, like the characters in our story, cling desperately, in periods of degradation and eclipse, to all that reminds them of a former state of ideal prosperity, which lingers in their literature and echoes in their souls, like dim recollections of a forgotten paradise, or faint reminiscences of a former birth. Distance lends enchantment, and time effaces detail, and endows stern realities with dreamy beauty; and thus a rugged stony past fades gradually into a picture, blue, soft, and

unutterably beautiful, like some low barren island, seen far away in the haze, over a hot and glittering sea.

POONA, March 21, 1903.

[1] Shrí also means a Sacred Lotus, and it is the name of the twelfth Digit of the Moon: thus indicating the position of this story in the series to which it belongs: for an account of which, and the manuscript, I may refer the reader to the preface to her predecessor Shashiní, entitled A Digit of the Moon.

[2] Cp. also I. 154, 155, and elsewhere. It should be observed that learned doctors differ as to the interpretation of the three strides: but this is not the place to examine their views.

[3] From this point of view, the period of Night would be the reign of Tamas, one of the three great categories of that philosophy: the Quality of Darkness, as opposed to Light, Ignorance, as opposed to Knowledge, Evil, as opposed to Good, the World Below, as opposed to the World Above.

[4] From the Bhagwad-Gitá: IT is never born and never dies.

CONTENTS.

SUNSET.—An Evil Eye

NIGHT.—A Sleep and a Dream

DAWN

[Note.—As the story belongs, by its title, both to Sun and Moon, it should be observed, that the Night and the two Twilights, Dusk and Dawn, apply to both in opposite ways. The Moon rises when the Sun sets, reigns over the Night when he is buried in Darkness, and either sets or vanishes when he is risen in his light. For the Moon is the type of Night, or this lower world (ihaloka), but the Sun, of Day, that is, of the other.]

NIGHT.

I. A Lotus of the Day II. By Beat of Drum III. An Eclipse of the Sun IV. Inspiration V. Nightwalker VI. A Lotus of the Night VII. The Silver Swans VIII. The Land of the Lotus IX. Recognition X. Separation XI. The Lord of the Beasts XII. The Other Body XIII. A Light in Darkness XIV. Illusion XV. The Dead of Night XVI. Before Dawn

Sunset

AN EVIL EYE.

The Descent of the Sun.

INVOCATION.

O glorious and infinite Spirit of Peace, Lord of Ascetics, who whirling round in thy wild dance dost lend as it were its colour to the sky, in whose mirror are seen reflected the blueness of thy throat and the silver digit of the moon in the matted tufts of thy tawny hair: thee we adore. And we worship the ever victorious trunk of the Elephant of Elephants, whose fierce glare consumes the innumerable hosts of opposing obstacles, as a forest fire shrivels the blades of dry grass[1].

Long ago, on the slopes of Himálaya, there lived a young King of the Spirits of the Air, named Kamalamitra[2]; for he was a portion of the Sun. And he worshipped the husband of Umá[3]. And he turned his back on the pleasures of the senses, and went afar off, and dwelt alone, among the icy peaks and snowy plateaux that lie around Kailás. And there he remained, living at first upon leaves, and then upon smoke, and finally upon air, performing penances of appalling severity, till after a hundred years[4] that Lord of Creatures was moved to compassion. And he appeared to him, in the twilight of evening, in the guise of an ascetic, but in stature like a tall tree, with the new moon in his hair, and said: I am pleased with thy devotion, so now I grant thee a boon: ask. Then the young King bowed before him, and said: Blessed One, let me continue in this contemplation of thee: that is enough. Then said Maheshwara: This is well said: nevertheless, ask of me some boon. Then said Kamalamitra: Since it is so, and I must absolutely choose, then give me a wife, whose

eyes, like these hills and this sky, shall be full of the dusky lustre[5] of thy throat and thy moon, as if, insatiate of gazing at thee, they had become, not transitory mirrors, but pictures permanently stained with thy glory. For so shall she be a medium of devotion between me and thee.

Then the moon-crested God was pleased. But he looked into the future, by his magic power of divination, and saw what was coming. And he said slowly: Eyes such as these will be dangerous, not only to others, but also to their owner. Nevertheless, I have given thee a boon: thou shalt have thy desire.

Then he disappeared, and Kamalamitra returned home rejoicing. And by the favour of the deity all the emaciation and fatigue of his penances left him, and he became strong as Bhima and beautiful as Arjuna[6]. And he arrived at his palace on the evening of the next day, and went into the garden to repose, as the sun was going down. And as he went, he looked before him, and suddenly he saw a woman, floating on a pool of white lotuses, in a boat of sandal, with silver oars. And her glances fell on those snowy flowers, and turned their tint to blue, for her eyes were lowered: and she was resting her chin on one hand as she lay, and with the other dropping one by one into the water the petals of a lotus red as blood. And the round curve of her hip stood up like a sand bank, and was mirrored again in the silent water below. And her lips moved, for she was counting the petals as they fell.

And Kamalamitra stood still, holding his breath, and gazing at her, fearing to move, for he thought it was a dream. Then all at once she looked up and saw him, and smiled, bathing him with the colour of her eyes. And it seemed to Kamalamitra that he stood in a pool of colour formed by the essence of all the blue lotuses in the world. And then suddenly he remembered the boon of the God who is clothed with heaven[7], and he exclaimed: Surely thou art my own wife, sent me by the God who keeps his promises, and none other. For yesterday I gazed at his glory, and now I am gazing at thy two eyes, and it is the same. And if it be so, by what name shall I call thee? Then she said: My name is Anushayiní[8], and for what purpose did the Creator form these eyes, but to reflect the image of their lord?

Then Kamalamitra, having thus obtained her from the deity, took possession of his lovely little wife, and thereafter remained with her in the region about Kailás, utterly bewildered and intoxicated by constantly gazing at those mirrors of deity, her two great eyes. And he plunged into their sea, and was drowned in it, and the whole world seemed to him to be made of lotus blue[9]. And like a vessel filled to the brim and running over, he was so overflowing with delight in her beauty, and the pride of having so unique a specimen of womankind all to himself, that he could not contain his emotion, but sought relief in going about everywhere talking about her, and trying to get everybody to acknowledge, what he thought himself, that all other women in the world were absolutely nothing in comparison with his own wife. Alas! a woman is one thing, and emancipation quite another.

So it happened, that on a day, when he was disputing about her with one of his friends, and abusing him, for not readily admitting all his own eulogies of his wife, that friend of his suddenly burst out laughing, and exclaimed: For all things there is a cure, even for snake-bite there is a cure, but there is no cure, for one who has been bitten with a woman's beauty. Know, O thou infatuated lover, that the golden glamour of our Other Half, Man's ectype, Woman, is not like a simple musical theme, but one infinitely various, containing ten thousand notes, and stirring like a churning stick all the emotions in the ocean of the soul of man. And however beautiful may be thy wife's eyes, still eyes are only eyes, and a woman is not all eye, but something more. For one woman witches us, like a waterfall, with the music of her bubbling laughter, and another entrances us, like a forest-pool, with the peace of her shadowy silence. And one entangles us, like Yama[10], in the nectar-nooses of her hair, while another pierces us, like Manobhawa[11] with the archery of her poisoned eyes. And

one enflames us, like the Sun, in the fever-fire of sick desire, while another soothes us, like the Moon, by the camphor of her dewy kisses. And like oxen, we are goaded, by the biting sting of one woman's evil, and like elephants, we are tamed, by the subtle spell of another's purity; and like birds, we are decoyed, by the lure of the bower of one girl's arms, and like bees, we hover and sip, around the honey of another's lips, and like snakes, we wind and coil[12] round the slender stem of one girl's waist, and like weary travellers, we long to sleep on the living pillow of another's bosom. Then Kamalamitra broke in impatiently: Away with the fascinations, of all the women in the three worlds, past, present, or to come! Could they unite to form the very body of the god of love, yet the eyes of Anushayiní, alone, would, like the eye of the enemy of Kaudarpa[13], reduce them to ashes. Aye! those eyes, with their blue irresistible invitation, would succeed in corrupting sages, where Menaká, Tilottamá[14] and the rest had failed.

Then his friend laughed in derision, and said: Boasting is useless, and in words, all men can do everything, and every woman is another Rambhá[15]. Babble no more of her beauty, but come, let your paragon of a wife put her power to the proof. For hard by here, in the wood on the hillside, is an aged Sage, named Pápanáshana[16], whose austerities terrify even the gods. He would be an admirable touchstone for the eyes of this wonderful wife of yours, whose beauty exists, like a bubble, only on the stream of your words.

And then, stung by the taunt, Kamalamitra exclaimed in wrath: Fool! if she does not turn him from his asceticism as easily as amber draws after it stubble and grass, I will cut off my own head and cast it into the Ganges. Then his friend laughed again, and said: Do nothing rash, thou art not Daksha[17]: once gone, thy head can never be restored. But Kamalamitra hurried away to find Anushayiní. And he found her in the garden by the lotus pool, and told her of his brag, and said: Come instantly, and make the experiment, and vindicate the power of those wonderful eyes of thine, and my own faith in them, without delay. For I burn to convict that foolish sceptic of his folly, by ocular demonstration.

Then Anushayiní said slowly: Dear husband, thou wert angry, and therefore indiscreet, and I fear, lest by doing evil we may bring on ourselves punishment. For expiation follows guilt, as surely as Orion treads on the heels of Rohini[18]. There is sin and danger in this rash experiment. And now it will be better for us not to venture upon the verge of a precipice, over which we may both fall, into irreparable disaster.

But as she spoke, her eyes rested on Kamalamitra, and bewildered him, and destroyed the persuasion of her words. For he heard nothing that she said, but was full of the blindness of passion, and more than ever convinced of the omnipotence of her beauty. And so, seeing that she could not turn him from his will, Anushayiní gave in, and yielded to him as to her deity. Nay, in the interior of her heart she rejoiced, to find that she could not dissuade him, for she was filled with curiosity herself, to see whether in truth her beauty would prevail over the ascetic, though she trembled for the consequences. Alas! where beauty, and curiosity, and youth, and self-will, and intoxication combine, like a mad elephant, where is the cotton thread of self-control?

Then those two lovers kissed each other passionately, like travellers who have been separated for a year. And yet they knew not that they were doing so for the last time. And then they went together to the forest, to find that old ascetic. And hand-in-hand they rambled about, like a pair of Love's arrows in human form[19], till they penetrated to the very heart of that wood. And there on a sudden they came upon that old sage, and saw him standing, plunged in meditation, motionless as a tree. And round him the ants had built up their hills, and his beard and hair trailed from his head, like creepers, and ran down along the ground, and were covered with leaves: and over his withered limbs played a pair of lizards, like living emeralds. And he looked straight before him, with great eyes that mirrored everything, but saw nothing, clear and unfathomable and still, like mountain tarns in which all the fish are asleep.

And Kamalamitra and Anushayiní looked at him awhile in silence, and then at each other, and trembled, for they knew that they were staking their souls. But as he wavered, the thought of his friend's derision came back into Kamalamitra's mind, and filled him with anger. And he said to Anushayiní: Advance, and let this old muni[20] see you, and I will mark the result.