“The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,For the reed that grows never more againAs a reed with the reeds in the river.”
“The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,For the reed that grows never more againAs a reed with the reeds in the river.”
“The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,For the reed that grows never more againAs a reed with the reeds in the river.”
“The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed that grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.”
“But we are so happy!” she whispered, clinging against him to feel the warmth of his love. “The outer spaces are cold, cold. I don’t regret V. Lydiat. I have you. The reeds were happier in the river.”
Martin Welland sighed.
“You had both,” he said. “You have only me now.”
But that regret also slipped away. They forgot. It all faded into the light of common day and they were extremely happy.
The two could never account for the way in which they had come together in that dream-land of theirs. They had lost the clue of the mystery once and for all.
Jadrup Gosein could have told them, but it never occurred to them to ask him. There are however many lives and the Gods have a long patience.
THE SEA OF LILIES
A STORY OF CHINA
THE SEA OF LILIESA STORY OF CHINA
I had come down from the mountain fastnesses of my home in Kashmir on pilgrimage to a certain island off the coast of China. A long, long pilgrimage, but necessary; for, with a Buddhist monk attached to the monastery of Kan-lu-ssu in the hills of North China, I was to collect certain information from the libraries and scholars of two famous monasteries on the island of Puto. I, Lancelot Dunbar, am known to the monks of the northern monastery of Kan-lu-ssu by the friendly title of “Brother of the Pen,” and it is my delightful lot to labour abundantly among the strange and wonderful stores of ancient Buddhist and historic knowledge contained in some of the many monastic libraries scattered up and down India, China and Ceylon. It follows that my wife and I own two homes.
One is a little deserted monastery in the Western Hills, in China, known as “First Gate of Heaven,” and so beautiful that the name might have grown about it like the moss on its tiled roofs. Following the bigger monasteries, it has its quiet courtyard, its lotus-pool and the peaked roofs with their outward, upturned sweep. The pines crowd upon us, and the cloud-dragons of rain and wind play in their uncouth sport among the peaks and fill our streams with singing, glittering water.
Our other home is a red-pine hut near the Liderwat in Kashmir. The beauty of it, the warm homeliness set amid the cold magnificence of the hills and immeasurable forests, no tongue can tell. The hut is very large and low, divided into our own rooms and the guest-rooms, with hospitable fireplaces for fragrant pine-logs and floors strewn with rugs brought by yak and pony down the wild tracks from Yarkand and Leh. Beautiful rooms, as I think—the windows looking out into the pines and the endless ways that lead to romance and vision.
Which home is the more beautiful I cannot say. We have never known, and our friends give no help; for some choose one and some the other. One day I shall write of our life in Kashmir, the clean, beautiful enchantment of it, the journeyings into the mountains—but to-day I must recall myself to the pilgrimage to Puto.
It is an island off the coast of China, as I said before, most holy to the Buddhists of the Far East, dear to all who know it in its beauty and religious peace and the lovely legends that cling about it, a place of purification of the heart and of a serenity that the true pilgrim may hope to carry away with him as the crowning of his toil and prayer. It is one of the Chusan Archipelago and is separated from the large island of Chusan by a stretch of water known as the “Sea of Lilies.” And it is not very far distant from the hybrid dissipations of Shanghai and the swarming streets of Ningpo and can be reached from either. Yet it is as far removed from their hard realities as if it were built on floating clouds and lit by other dawns than ours.
Shanghai concerns itself, I am told, with that ancient and universally respected Trinity of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I know little of it myself and accept the testimony of friends, and especially of one who knew it well. “I just think,” he said with conviction, “that if nothing happens to Shanghai, Sodom and Gomorrah were very unfairly dealt with.”
So I met my friend Shan Tao in Ningpo, and we set sail together. The island of Puto, at all events, concerns itself with a very different Trinity from that of Shanghai. For the deity of Puto is the Supreme, enthroned in eternal light, and on his right hand stands Wisdom and on his left, Love. The patron saint of this island is Kwan-yin (the Kwannon of Japan), the incarnation of divine love and pity, she who has refused to enter paradise, so that, remaining on this sad earth, she may be attentive to the tears and prayers of humanity and depart from it only when the Starry Gates have closed behind the last sinner and sorrow and sighing have fled away like clouds melting into the golden calms of sunset. Yet when I say “she,” I limit the power of this mightyBodhisattva, orPusa, as Buddhas-to-be are called in India and China. For that pure essence is far above all limitations of sex and, uniting in itself the perfection of both, may be manifested as either, according to need and opportunity. Be that as it may, Puto is the holiest, most immediate home of Kwan-yin, and her influence spreads far beyond its shores and makes the very sea that surrounds it sacred. Therefore it is to this day the Sea of Lilies.
For when the Dwarf-men, the Japanese, came storming down on the island from Hangchow long ago and carried off a part of the sacred relics, they woke in the dawn to find their ship moving slower and slower and finally rocking like a ship asleep in what seemed a vast meadow of lilies. Thick as snow about them lay the ivory chalices with golden stamens; thick as the coiling of snakes innumerable were the long piped and knotted stems, with the great prone leaves. Neither oar nor sail could move the ship; for the mysterious lilies, white and silent, that had sprung up from the depths in a night held it as if with chains. And then comprehension entered the hearts of the Dwarfs, and, taking hurried counsel, they put the ship about and headed for the sacred island once more. As they did so, a soft wind like the waft of a passing garment breathed on the surface of the sea, the ivory chalices closed and the crystal lymph flowed over them, and, where the leagues of blossom had spread, were now only the foam-flowers of the waste ocean. So the treasures were restored to Puto, and, when the story was told to the monks, they adored the Heavenly Lady who guards her own.
Lest it be said that the burdened consciences of the Dwarfs misled them into a dream, let the story be told of Wang Kuei, a haughty official who was sent on his Emperor’s behalf to do reverence at the shrines of Puto and did it grudgingly and with a pride that ill became him. So, when his ship set sail from the island and he sat in glory on deck, glad at heart that his service was over, suddenly her swift course was stayed. Behold, in the moonlight, the meadows of ocean had bloomed into innumerable lilies, and there was no sea-track between them, no glimmer of water in the interstices of the paving-leaves, and the ship was a prisoner of beauty! Then the story of the Dwarfs rushed into his soul. In haste he prostrated himself on the deck with his face toward the island and prayed for pardon as he had never yet prayed, and the Heavenly Lady heard him and the lilies were resumed into her pure being. The man of pride returned to Puto and, doing homage of the humblest, went back in security to his Emperor.
But who can tell the beauty of Puto, looking forth on its little sisters of the archipelago with the serenity of an elder who has attained? We put up in one of the cells allotted to pilgrims in a monastery among the hills overlooking the Sea of Lilies. Surely, I think, a lovelier place could not be. The little ways wind about the island, past great rocks sculptured with holy figures and groves of trees that climb the hills to the tiled roofs of the many temples and monasteries. And wild and sweet on the hills grows the gardenia, whence the island has its name of “White Flower.” The sunny sweetness of its perfume recalled to me the far-away, wild daphne bushes of Mount Abu in Rajputana, near the marvellous white temples of Dilwara, temples of another, yet not unallied, faith. It is easy to tell when the gods go by—it can never be common air again, but sweet, sweet unutterably.
All day I trod the bays on sand fine as powdered gold or wandered among the flowers, taking notes for my book at the various temples and talking with the monks and such hermits as are not under the vow of silence. When they found I was at work for Kan-lu-ssu in the hills, they opened their hearts and told me many things.
I suppose it is difficult for the western mind to comprehend the impulses that send a man to dwell in the solitudes of Puto, girdled with its miraculous sea, there to let the years slip from him like a vesture, unheeded, unregretted—but to me it is easy. Let me tell the story of one of these monks, gathered from his own lips and told where a ravine breaks down to the sands of a little bay; where the small waves fall in a lulling monotone, a fitting burden to quiet words softly spoken as the shadows lengthened to the hour of rest. He was named in religion “High Illumination.” His name in the world I cannot tell.
His father had been a farmer in Anhui, a well-to-do man for his class. There were two sons, and my friend was the younger. His father, of whom he spoke with deep reverence, had the utmost confidence in the elder brother. In dying, he expressed only the desire that the elder brother would make a just division with the younger of all the possessions he was leaving, and so departed.
“And I was content,” said High Illumination, “knowing my father’s wisdom and believing that his wish, uttered in the presence of us both, would be as binding upon my honoured brother as an imperial command. Therefore, when all observances of departure had been completed and the proper time came, I expected my share in peace, and the more so since my good father had provided for my marriage with a beautiful maiden, the daughter of a lifelong friend. But that was not to be.
“And still my brother said nothing; all the duties of the seasons proceeded and I worked and helped him, expecting daily that he would speak.
“Then at last in great astonishment I ventured this: ‘Honoured Elder Brother, the will of our just father is still unfulfilled. Should we not proceed in this matter?’
“And he, with anger and a reddened face: ‘What is this discontent? Do you not share the land where you labour upon it? What more would you have?’
“So, very temperately and courteously, I said: ‘Honoured Elder Brother, I work but as a hired man who has no hire. I have not so much as acashin my pocket to buy me the least of pleasures or needs. I have but my food, and that, as I think, my elder sister [the brother’s wife] grudges me. Such certainly was not the intention of our just father.’
“Then, his face distorted with rage, he replied, ‘Have your way, and if it bring bitterness and disturbance of spirit, then thank yourself for your greed!’ ”
High Illumination paused a moment as if in memory.
“Greed!” I said indignantly. “My friend, you were wronged and cruelly. You could in a court of law have compelled him to do you justice.”
“Yet he was right: for me it was greed,” said High Illumination, with a smile of quiet humour. “I had thought of it night and day, till it had soured my soul. But the next day at dawn my brother called to me with anger in his voice and said: ‘The division is now made. Come and see.’
“So we passed along through the dewy dawn-gold in silence, past his fields of budding rice and millet prosperously green, and at last we came to a great stretch of pebbles and water-springs where nothing would grow, no, not even a blade of grass. The place had come to my father from many ancestors, and none could either use or sell its barrenness.
“And there it lay, grey and hard in the morning gold, and my brother, pointing, said: ‘Take it; the division is made. And when you store your plentiful rice, thank my generosity.’ And, turning, he left me and went back to his prosperity, laughing.”
“It was a devil’s deed,” I said. “Surely he laid up for himself a blackkarmain so doing.”
High Illumination shook his head slowly. “Who can judge the karma of another? Daily did I pray that my brother’s feet might be set in the way of peace, and I had assurance that thus and no otherwise it should be. But hear the story and its loveliness.
“So I sat nearly all day, staring at the pebbles. There was not even a yard of the ground that spade and hoe could conquer, and I knew myself vanquished. Then in the evening I rose and went to a neighbour and said, ‘I beseech you to find me work; for I must eat or die.’ He gave me work and the wage was my food only; for he was bone-poor. So I lived for two years, and, if I passed my brother, he would jeer at my rags and leanness.
“Now, as I went by my desolate heritage one day, I saw that between the pebbles were pushing little bright green shoots, strong and hardy, thrusting the small stones aside to make room for their impatience. The tender greenness pleased me. It was like warmth and sunshine to see the life of it, and I wondered what manner of growth could find food among the stones. For a while I could not go that way, but, when I went again, behold a thing most beautiful, for all the plants were covered with buds like pearls!
“My brother, hear a marvel. One day, before ever I came in sight of it, a sweet perfume, warm with the sun, exhaling the very breath of paradise, surrounded me. When I approached, the desert had blossomed abundantly. I could not see the stones; they were covered with lilies, white lilies, each with a gold cup, set in ivory, to hold the incense-offering to the sun. What could I say, what think in beholding this miracle of loveliness? I sat beside them to watch what they would do, and a light breeze moved the flowers like bells upon the stems, and there was a going in the leaves of them as though the hem of an unseen garment trailed among them. And they were mine.”
“They had never grown there before?” I asked.
“No man of those parts had seen the like; nor I myself. Every day, when my work was done, I went to look at them and sat to see their beauty of ivory and gold. And once, as I sat, the rich official, Chung Ching-yu, rode by. Pausing in astonishment, he bought a handful of the flowers, giving me the first money I had seen for a year, and he told me to gather the bulbs in due season and receive from him in return their weight in silver. And what he said ran on to other rich men and to men not rich, in the city of Ningpo, and they came bidding against one another for the bulbs to sell to the great and to send in ships to strange countries, until I who had been poor scarce knew how to store my riches. And I saw what my lilies loved and put for them more stones and water, and the next year they were a wilderness of sweets, where all the bees of the world came to gather nectar.
“But I knew indeed whence they came, since such beauty could not be of earth, and I withdrew myself to a lonely place and addressed my prayer to Kwan-yin, who had thus blessed my poverty, and I said: ‘O Adorable, whose ears are open ever to the cry of the oppressed, whose beautiful eyes are pitiful to sorrow, I bless thee for this compassion. And because I dread the love of riches, and the flowers and not money, are to me my soul, give me grace so to receive the mercy of thy gift that it may befit thy greatness and my littleness.’ Even as I said the words, a thought came to me, and I went to find my brother, whom I had not seen for long days.
“Now, when he saw me come, his face darkened with rage, and he said: ‘Are you come to taunt me because of my folly, in that I gave the best of all the land to your idleness, or to thank me for the gold it has heaped upon you? Speak out; for the lucky man may speak.’
“Then, standing at the door, I said this: ‘Elder Brother, your action was unjust, and certainly the Divine does not sleep, but awaits its hour in peace. As for me, the Spirit of Compassion has seen my poverty and had pity upon me, and now I will tell you my heart. Two nights ago as I lay and slept, it seemed to me that the moonlit air grew sweet with a sweetness more than all my lilies—nay, than all the flowers of earth—and I knew that the gates of paradise were opened and that the immortal flowers exhaled their souls, and that to breathe them was purification. Then, far off on a cloud so white that it resembled the mystic petals of the lotus, stood a lady with veiled face, and in one hand a chalice and in the other a willow spray, and even through the veil her beauty rayed as the moon behind a fleece of cloud. My Brother, need I say her name?’
“And, as I spoke, the hard face softened; for who is there that knows not the Pity of the Lord? I continued: ‘In a voice sweeter than sleep, she augustly addressed me, saying: ‘The Divine on its hidden throne knows no repose while the sigh of the oppressed is heard before it. And because this injustice was borne with patience, the armies of the flowers of paradise were marshaled. Say, now, whether justice was done.’ ”
“And I said, ‘It was done.’ And, as a cloud slips off the moon as she glides upward to the zenith, so fell the veil—but what I saw I may not tell, nor could, for I weep in remembering that Beauty.”
His voice faltered even in recollection; nor could I speak myself. We sat in silence awhile, looking over the Sea of Lilies with the twilight settling softly upon it.
Then he resumed: “So I said: ‘Elder Brother, having seen this, I have all riches and need no more. Take the land; for I depart into the life of peace, where is no need of gold or gain, having beheld the ineffable Treasure of the Nirvana and the very Soul of Quiet.’
“And his eyes kindling, he said, ‘What, is it mine—all mine?’
“ ‘Yours. Yet remember that these lilies are of heaven. It is in my mind that these will have not only pure water and clean rock but also a clean heart to tend them.’
“Then, very doubtfully, he took my hand and held it awhile in his and, dropping it at last, turned, weeping, away. Thus we parted, and I came to Puto.”
“And you never saw him again?”
High Illumination smiled, looking to where the star of evening blossomed above us. “Four years passed,” he replied. “Then, among the pilgrims who came to the holy shrines, I saw my brother, and yet could scarcely think it he, so reverently and with such humility he knelt where the Divine Lady waits in gold at the left side of the Infinite One.
“Need I recount the rest, O Brother of the Pen? He came to my cell and, seated at my feet, he told me all. When I was gone, the lilies withered, and at first he thought he lacked my skill and spent much money on digging and trenching, but still the lilies died, and at last he saw that the air that clung about his garments withered them. So, as he sat musing on this strange thing, he resolved in his soul that he would no more sell the Divine in the streets nor market his peace for gold, but that he would set aside these stones and pure springs for almsgiving to the poorest of the poor. Looking up, he said this: ‘Spirit of Compassion, have pity on my soul, bound and crippled by the love of gain. For I too am not beyond the bounds of thy pity, and, if there is hope of it for me in this life as the fruit of some solitary good deed in former existences, grant that the flowers of heaven may blossom once more and the souls of many rejoice in their loveliness.’
“And, as the words were said, he knew that the prayer was heard. The lilies returned in a beauty beyond telling, and it seemed that half the world desired them. He who had not known the joy of giving became now, as it were, the very source of charity and gave not only of his lilies but of his rice and millet and all his gains, that the heart of the poor might be gladdened with plenty. So, as he told, we sat together, hand in hand, with tongues that could not be satisfied in telling and eyes that beheld the greatness of the Divine. And for many years he came, and the monks watched and watched for his coming and I most of all. And at last he did not come, but his son in his place, who told me that the bond of life had been gently loosed, and it was believed that High Presences stood about his death-bed while the villages mourned.
“O Brother of the Pen, write this true story, that all may know there is none like unto the Hearer of Prayer!”
The evening star hung like a steadfast lamp over the dim ocean, and the air was so still that, when at last a faint stirring came in the grasses and leaves, it was as if some listening influence were passing softly away, as indeed I believe.
Skeptics may say that the wish was father to the thought. But I know better. And as for the flowers themselves, there is a strange susceptibility in the plant life we call “lower.” Of that truth I know many stories which I shall tell one day.
But how shall I tell the beauty of Puto looking forth on its little sisters of the Archipelago with the serenity of a saint who has attained? I sat alone next day by the carved Rock of Meditation pondering these things, and bathing my soul in the peace of them as in deep water. The mystery of the place was about me, for Puto is a home of the mystic order of Buddhist monasticism which in India is called Jhana, in Japan Zen, and there were men at hand to whom the bond of the flesh is a thing easily unloosed. One sat on the height above me now in profound meditation.
I analyzed my own heart. Is it because all this with the atmosphere it creates, is so beautiful that I love it? Or is it because it presents a truth forgotten, lost, in our hurrying day of fevered unrest?
Because it is of the truth. That is the answer. None can doubt it who understands and loves these people and their teachings.
None—who is admitted to the quiet of their secret places and thoughts.
It is a truth which is a part of nature itself. Consider the lilies of the field. They breathe it, the soft breezes whisper it among the leaves of the maiden-hair trees, the measured cadence of the sea chimes it eternally on the golden shores of Puto.
They have the secret of peace, which we have immeasurably and to our ruin lost.
So my friend Shan Tao and I paced along the pilgrim’s path past the sea-cave where visions of the holy Kwan-yin are said to have been seen in the sun ray that strikes through the rent roof with something of the same effect as the light contrived to fall from above in the temple of Mendoet in Java on the white and beautiful face of the Bodhisattva who sits in ecstasy below. And wandering on, beguiling the way with legends and tales of the Excellent Law to reach the southern monastery, pausing to look at the half ruined pagoda adorned on its four faces with carvings of Kwan-yin, and her brother saints, P’uhsien, Wen-shu and Ti-tsang, the last known in Japan as Jizo the beloved protector of dead children, we reached the southern monastery and the courtyard with its noble incense burners and candle holders, shaded by trees. Here it was a part of my purpose to search for references in the library on the upper story where the treasures are guarded by a serene Buddha in alabaster. And let me say that if ever the libraries of the many Chinese monasteries are searched with care and patience great additions will be made not only to the science of the soul but also to the world’s wisdom. Many lost treasures thus await their day of resurrection—treasures brought back in the early days of our era by Chinese monks who made the terrible pilgrimage through the cruel deserts and mountains to India that they might return loaded with the spiritual treasures of illumination and wisdom, and learned comments and digressions on these written by mighty Chinese patriarchs whose gilded and lacquered bodies are still preserved in the remote abodes of faith.
And when that day of revelation comes it will be found how much of the religious thought of the divided faiths can be traced to common sources in an antiquity so vast that it strikes the soul with awe. May that knowledge bring union and surcease to the petty wranglings and contempts which cloud the living waters of Truth.
There are few scenes more serenely beautiful than the lotus pond of this monastery and its still waters doubling the old arched bridge and the sailing clouds, and the sunshine, unbearably delicious, brooding, brooding upon it like a soul in ecstasy. A soft collegiate calm was about us, the monks coming and going at intervals with kindly glances at my pen and note book, and the reverence for the written character and for what it represents that contact with our civilization will most certainly kill. A harmless snake was basking in the sun not far away, and a deer taught tameness by fellowship wandered about under the trees, as they do on the island of Miyajima in Japan.
How beautiful the confidence of the creatures in these Buddhist resorts, how much we lose in losing their companionship! The gentleness of heaven was on Puto that day, and the words of a poet-monk who wrote of the beloved island floated through my mind like little golden clouds.
“Who tells you that there is no road to heaven? This is heaven’s own gateway, and through it you may pass direct to the very Throne of the Divine.”
I left it on a lovely day of summer—no foam-flowers blossoming on the Sea of Lilies, a drowsy golden haze veiling the neighbouring islands. I could scarcely have borne to leave it, especially its unrifled stores of wisdom, had I not known that I was free of it henceforward and might count on my welcome, come when I would. Almost, as we crossed the sea, I could dream that the miraculous ship of Kwan-yin floated before us, its sails filled with no earthly breeze, bearing the happy souls to the golden Paradise of the West where the very perfume of the flowers is audible in song. We who in Dante read the story of another Boat of Souls may well recognize the inmost truth of this legend. And certainly in Puto the soul may at least enter the heavenly Boat of Beauty that the poets have sung in all tongues and ages, and pass in it to the blue horizon of dreams and delights.
THE BRIDE OF A GOD
THE BRIDE OF A GOD
Two hundred years ago in India, many happy people dwelt in the little town of Krishnapur—happy because their belief was fixed and immutable and it brought them gladness; for in all innocence and devotion they worshipped Krishna the Beloved, the Herdsman of Brindaban, Lord of Love, whose name their little town carried like a jewel of price.
And certainly the God had gifted it with beauty. The terraced houses climbed the ways of a hill deeply wooded with tamarind and pippala trees, and down a deep ravine ran the little Bhadra River, falling from great heights to feed the blue lake below. The place lay in the sunshine, clear and bright as a painting on crystal brought by the Chinese merchants, and by the favour of the God a delicate coolness spread upward from the lake among the clustered houses. In its midst was a very small island with a little temple lifting its shining gilded roof and spires among the palms. In this he was worshipped as the Flute-Player, an image of black basalt, very beautiful—a youth with the Flute forever at his lips; and there were devout men and women who declared that, in the midnight silence, sounds of music comparable only to the music of Indra’s heaven had been heard among the palm trees and mingled with the eternal song of the river. This report and the beauty and quiet of the fair little town brought a few pilgrims to bathe in the lake, crowding the broad low ghats that led down to its pure waters with their flower-hued garments and the strong chanting of their prayers.
Many legends haunted the town of Krishnapur.
Now the Pandit Anand Das was a man learned in the Vedas and all the sacred books, and his heart glowed with a great devotion. Since his son, who should have inherited his learning, was dead, and it could not flow in that beloved channel, he resolved that, slight and frail as a woman’s intellect must needs be, he would instruct his daughter Radha in the mysteries of the Holy Ones, as far as possible. He had named her Radha from his devotion to Sri Krishna; for Radha is the heart’s love of the God; and in bestowing this name he had made offering and prayed that he might live to see her as beautiful, as true in devotion as the Crowned Lady. The prayer was answered.
Beautiful indeed was Radha, an image of golden ivory, with lips like a pomegranate bud before its sweetness is tasted, and great eyes dark as the midnight and lit by her stars. Beautiful the soft moulding of her rounded chin, and the shaping of the flower-face poised on its stem like a champak blossom that all the bees of love must seek, and the silk-soft brows and the heavy sweep of shadowy lashes. Flawless from head to rosy heel as the work of a mighty craftsman who wills not that his name shall perish, so was Radha; and when the people saw her as she passed along the little street, they gave thanks to the Beautiful for her beauty. Fairer than fair, wiser than wise in all the matters of the Gods, she lived her quiet days among the palms and temples, and each day laid its gift at her feet.
Now the Brahman, her father, having, as it were, devoted her to the God, rejoiced to see thatbhakti—which is faith, love, and worship in a perfect unity—was a steadfast flame in her heart; nor was there any word to utter her burning devotion. As a child she would leave all play to sit before his feet and hear as he read of the divine Krishna,—
The story of the Lord of AllBeginneth with a Pastoral,—
The story of the Lord of AllBeginneth with a Pastoral,—
The story of the Lord of AllBeginneth with a Pastoral,—
The story of the Lord of All
Beginneth with a Pastoral,—
and her child’s heart lived among the meadows of Brindaban with the marvellous Child whose very name is ‘He who draws or attracts.’
And thus her learned father taught her.
“This Krishna is the true incarnation of the Preserver who upholds the universe. ‘For in him,’ says the Mahabharata Santeparva, ‘the worlds flutter like birds in water’; and of him did not Maheshwara the Destroyer say: ‘The divine and radiant Krishna must be beheld by him who desires to behold Me.’ Thus in Sri Krishna is all Deity sheathed in flesh, that the soul of man may dimly apprehend his glory. A Child—yet thus in the Holy Song does the Prince Arjun cry to him:—
“ ‘God, in thy body I see all the Gods,And all the varied hosts of living things,The undivided Thou, the highest pointOf human thought.’
“ ‘God, in thy body I see all the Gods,And all the varied hosts of living things,The undivided Thou, the highest pointOf human thought.’
“ ‘God, in thy body I see all the Gods,And all the varied hosts of living things,The undivided Thou, the highest pointOf human thought.’
“ ‘God, in thy body I see all the Gods,
And all the varied hosts of living things,
The undivided Thou, the highest point
Of human thought.’
“Can such a Being be approached by mere humanity? No, he is too far away—the ear of man may not hear, and the eye of man may not see. How if he were born among us, if we might touch his feet, and show him in simple human ways our devotion? How if he would turn the common earth to beauty by breathing the air we breathe?
“And because it is so desired, it is done and Krishna is born, the Herdsman of Brindaban, the Beloved of India.”
So reading day by day, he instructed her in the lovely story of the Childhood, and, with the ancient Pastoral, took her to the forests and rich cattle pastures where Jumna River flows wide and still to the sea. The people are kind and simple, the sacred cows are driven out at dawn to feed, and brought back in the brief glow of evening by the fair women who tend the gentle beasts; and this is Brindaban, the home on earth of the Lord of All, the utterly Adored.
So much a child! But when floods of rain threatened to sweep away the herds and their keepers, he raised the hill Govardhan on the palm of his small soft hand, and sheltered them from the torrents and the fighting winds. And, as she sat at his feet, the Pandit showed his child Radha pictures of that other Child, darkly beautiful, who could poise the world on his shoulder.
As she grew older, the story widened and deepened with her years. But as she came to girlhood, her anxious mother, Sita Bai, ventured with trembling to doubt if it were well to draw her heart yet closer to the radiant manhood of the young God; for now the story is to be mystically interpreted and read by the light of the wisdom of the old and learned.
“Was there not Mira Bai, who went mad for the love of him and could not leave his image or his temple, and dreamed of his sweetness night and day until she wasted to a shadow and died? And, my lord, is not his great temple as Jagannath, Lord of the World, but ten miles from us at the great town of Chaki; and is it not filled with bands ofdevidasis—the dancing girls? Would you have your daughter as one of them—sacred but—vile?”
She caught the word back on her lips and looked about her in terror. Then added passionately:—
“O my lord, is it well to kindle such a passion in her heart, and she little more than a child?”
“Better be possessed by that love than by the follies and wickednesses that haunt the hearts of women to their ruin and ours. Woman, I know what I do. Be silent!” was all his answer.
So she was silent, and daily the story went onward and filled the soul of the girl. For now, as Krishna grew to manhood, beauty came upon him, irresistible, heart-compelling, the world’s Desire, and on the banks of Jumna was sung the Song of Songs—the Lover, dark and glorious, to whom the souls of all the women of Brindaban, whether wife or maid, cling passionately, forgetful of self and of all but him. And the deepest symbol of the adoration of Krishna is the passion of man for woman and woman for man.
“Walk warily here, my child, if you would understand,” said the Pandit; “for we move among pitfalls made by the mind of man fettered to his senses—the mind of man, that coin bearing the double superscription of spirit and flesh. Yet the story is plain for him who has ears to hear!”
And Radha, speechless, with dark eyes filled with adoring love, listened—listened, with no heart for aught else.
“Tell me more, more!” she said.
And he, seeing the Divine Passion, the trembling of her lips, the uttering of her heart, told on, imparting the desire of the God.
And when, as at this time, a marriage was spoken of for her with the son of the rich Brahman Narayan, she shrank from it with such shuddering horror that for very pity her father put it by for a while. But her mother watched in great fear.
And every evening, when the light was calm and golden and her father laid his books aside, she would sit before him, putting all else aside that she might drink in the sweet nectar of his words.
And now he told of the Herd-maidens bathing in the clear ripple of the river where the trees hang in green shadow over the deep pools.
Their garments lie on the bank, forgotten in the joy of youth and life, as they sing the praises of the Beloved, until at length one remembers and looks, and lo! some thief has stolen the vesture, and they stand ashamed in the crystal lymph, their long locks gathered about them.
Who has so bereft them? For no man or woman should bathe uncovered; and they have sinned—they know it!
And then a voice calls from the world of leaves above their heads, and there sits the Desired, shining like a star caught in the topmost boughs, and before him are rolled the stolen garments, and when, all shamefaced, they entreat for their restoration, the Voice exhorts them:—
“And if it is for My sake you have bathed and purified yourselves, then come forth fearless, and receive your vesture from my hands.”
And he laid in her hand the picture of the Gopis fearing and adoring as they leave the lustral water, some shrinking in humility, to receive their vesture from the Beautiful, who sits smiling far above them.
“And this, my daughter, is a very great mystery!” he said gravely. “And its meaning is this: ‘ThyThouis still with thee; if thou wilt attain unto me, quit thyself, and come.’ ”
And she said,—
“Father, surely the Self is withered into nothing when this dearworthy One calls. What were life, death—anything in the Three Worlds, compared with beholding his blissful countenance?”
And he replied,—
“Even so it is”; and laid aside his book and fell into a deep musing on the Perfections of the Lord; and Radha sat beside him.
So that night her mother said timidly,—
“Lord of my life, the girl is possessed by the God. I fear for her life. In her sleep she speaks aloud of him and stretches empty arms to the air, moaning. The colour fades in her lips, her eyes are fixed on dreams. She has no peace. Should we not seek an earthly lover for her own, that she may forget this Divine that is all the world’s?”
And he replied sternly,—
“Woman, lift up a grateful heart to the God that this girl is not as the rest but consumed by the love of the Highest. I have a thought unknown to you. All will be better than well.”
And she desisted in great fear and obedience; but the very next evening was the story told of Radha—heart of the God’s heart, the Beautiful whose name she herself bore! And the girl listened in an ecstasy.
It was a very still evening, the stars shining large and near the earth, the moon a mere crescent, such as when Maheshwara wears it in his hair and dreams on the mountain-peaks of Himalaya. They sat in the wide veranda, supported on wooden pillars bowered in the blossoms of the purple bougainvillæa and the white and scented constellations of jasmine. The wide transparent blinds of split cane were raised to admit the faintly perfumed breath of the garden; and by the Pandit’s elbow, as he sat on his raised seat, burned a little oil lamp, that he might read the sacred pages.
Radha sat on her low cushion beside him, thesariof Dakka muslin threaded with gold fallen back from her head as she looked up.
“ ‘In the passion of their worship, the women of Brindaban are drawn out into the forest, each grieving if he do but turn his calm immortal eyes upon any other than herself. Therefore, only in the secret places of the forest is there now any joy. It has left the little houses and gone out to dwell by the river. They must follow, for they bear the world’s wound in their heart, and he is its Balm.
“ ‘For a time his eyes rest on Radha the Beautiful, and she, transported with the pride of love, entreats that he will carry her in his arms. He stretches them to her with his mystic smile, and even as they touch her, he vanishes, and she is alone in a great darkness.’
“Here again, my daughter, is the parable clear,” the Pandit interrupted the reading to say. “Here is no room for spiritual pride and exclusive desire. Learn your place, proud soul! It is at his feet until he, unasked, shall raise you to the level of his heart.”
“ ‘So at the last she falters and falls, stunned with grief, the Herd-maidens weeping beside her, and—suddenly the Light shines. He has returned. He speaks:—
“ ‘Now I have tried you. You have remembered and thought upon me.
“ ‘You have increased your affection like beggars made newly rich.
“ ‘You have chosen my service, abandoning the world and the Scriptures.
“ ‘How can I do you honour? I cannot reward you enough.
“ ‘Though I should live for a hundred of Brahma’s years, yet I could not be free of my debt.’ ”
She sat in silence; and breaking upon it, they heard the soft tread of a man stop by their gate, and voices, and the servant who guarded the gate came in haste.
“Great Sir, here is the holy Brahman who is chief at the altar of great Jagannath in Chaki, and he would speak with you.”
“Bring him instantly hither. Stay! I go myself!” cried the Pandit, rising. He had forgotten his daughter.
“Father, have I your leave to go?” She drew the sari about her face.
“Daughter, no. This is a wise man and great. Be reverent and humble, and stay.”
She stood, trembling with fear to see one so holy. Surely it was a portent that the servant of the God should come on their reading. Yet she quieted her heart, and when her father, attending the great guest, placed him on his own seat, with the image of the wise Elephant-Headed One wreathing his trunk behind him, she bowed before him and touched his feet, for to her he was as Brahman and priest, an earthly God.
He was a man in middle life, tall and dignified in spite of a corpulence which gained upon him, and his features clear-cut in the proud lines that denoted his unstained ancestry. He knew himself the superior of kings. He would have spurned with his foot a jewel touched by the Mogul Emperor of India. Yet more. Had the Rajput Rana, a king of his own faith, sun-descended, royal, cast his shadow on his food in passing, he had cast it, polluted, away. So great is the pride of the Brahmans.
“Namaskar, Maharaj! What is your honoured pleasure?” asked the Pandit.
“I am on my way to Dilapur on the divine business,” he answered, with a voice like the lowest throbbing notes of the bronze temple gong. “But I would have a word with you, Brother, as I go.”
“Has my daughter your leave to depart, Maharaj?”
“Certainly, friend, though it is of her I come to speak. May I behold the face of the maiden? A Brahmani has no need to veil it. They are not secluded like the Toorki women.”
“Unveil before the Presence, my daughter, Radha.”
The guest started at the name so familiar to him in his devotions.
“It is singular, in view of my errand, that you should have given her this holy name, Pandit-ji.”
“She deserves it for the devoted love that she bears to Sri Krishna,” returned her father. “Of her face I say nothing, but her heart is flawless.”
“It is well!” said the priest Nilkant Rai, and turned gravely to Radha.
Many were thedevidasis, the nautch girls of the God, in the Temple of Jagannath. His eyes, deep and glowing, were no strangers to beauty, for the fairest were gathered like flowers to adorn the altars of the God, to dance and sing before his divine dreams, in all things to abide his will.
Six thousand priests serve Sri Krishna as Jagannath, Lord of the Universe, at Chaki, for great is his splendour. The Raja of Dulai, royal though he be, is the sweeper of his house. More than twenty thousand men and women do his pleasure, and of the glories of his temple who can speak?
But never had Nilkant Rai beheld such beauty as trembled before him then—darkly lovely, whitely fair, the very arrows of desire shooting from the bow of her sweet lips, half-child, half-woman, wholly desirable.
His eyes roved from the wonder of her face to the delicate rounding of her young breasts and the limbs exquisitely expressed, yet hidden, by the sari.
He looked in silence, then turned to the Pandit.
“Surely she is an incarnation of Radha in face as in name. Brother, she has my leave to go.”
Yet, when she had fled like a shadow, Nilkant Rai did not hasten. The other waited respectfully.Pañ—the betel for chewing—was offered in a silver casket. A garland of flowers perfumed with attar of roses was placed about the guest’s neck. Refreshments were served and refused.
At length he spoke, looking on the ground.
“Brother, it is known to you that the God makes choice when he will of a bride, favoured above all earthly women. Beautiful must she be, pure as a dewdrop to reflect his glory and return it in broken radiance, young, devout— Surely, even in this land of devotion, it is not easy to find such a one!”
“It is not easy, holy one!” returned the Pandit, trembling as he foreknew the end.
The other continued calmly.
“Now it so chanced that the priest Balaram passed lately through this town, and going by the tank to the temple, beheld your daughter, and returning, he came to me and said: ‘The God has shown the way. I have seen the Desire of his eyes.’ ”
“Great is the unlooked-for honour,” said the Pandit trembling violently; “so great that her father and mother bend and break beneath it. But consider, Holy One—she is an only child. Have pity and spare us! The desolate house—the empty days!” His voice trailed broken into silence.
“If this hides reluctance!” Nilkant Rai began sternly. “If you have given a foul belief to any tale of the Temple——”
“I, holy Sir! I have heard nothing. What should I hear?” The old man’s voice was feeble with fear. “Do I disparage the honour? Sri Krishna forbid! No, it is but the dread of losing her—the empty, empty house!”
“And is she not at the age when marriage becomes a duty, and would she not leave you then? Unreasonable old man!”
“Holy Sir—Maharaj, I tremble before the honour. But if the girl married, she would bring her babe and make her boast and gladden our hearts. But thus she is lost to us. Have pity! There are other Brahmans rich in daughters. Take not the one from my poverty.”
Nilkant Rai rose to his feet with majesty.
“I go. Never shall the God be rejected and ask twice. But when your daughter, old and haggard, looks up at you, answer that it was her unworthy father who kept her as a drudge on earth, when he might have raised her to a throne in heaven.”
As the old man stood with clasped hands, Radha broke from the shadows and threw herself before him.
“My father, would you hold me back? What joy, what glory in all the world can befall your child like this? The bride of the God! O Father!”
The tears were running down her face like rain. They glittered in the lamplight. He could not meet her eyes. Nilkant Rai stood by, silent.
“She is beautiful as a nymph of Indra’s heaven!” he thought. “Not Urvasi and Menaka, the temptresses of sages, were more lovely!” He said aloud;
“The maiden is right. She is worthy of the God’s embrace. Is there more to say?”
“Maharaj, I worship you!” said the old man submissively (and still he had not looked at his child). “It is well. What orders?”
“Let her be perfumed and anointed daily. Let her food and drink be purer than the pure. Let her worship daily at the temple of Sri Krishna. The bridal shall be held in a month from this, that time being auspicious. The Car of her Lord shall come for her as the Queen she is, and all envy the Chosen.”
He turned to Radha, still at her father’s feet.
“Farewell, happiest Lady. Joys earthly and celestial await you. Rest in the knowledge of the favour of Sri Krishna. Hear of him, dream of him, until the glad truth slays all dream.”
He moved slowly toward the steps. Her father pursued him.
“Maharaj. Forgive, forgive! I neglect my manners. Thanks a thousandfold for the honour you have condescended to bring us this happy day. Your commands are ever before me.”
The words poured forth. He could not say enough.
“It is well, Pandit-ji. It is well. Say no more!” said the great guest, striding onward to the gate where two other Brahmans and hispalkiawaited him.
She stood in the shadows as the Pandit returned.
“Father, beloved, did I do wrong? Have you not taught me all my life that there is none like him—none?”
“My pearl, what is done is done. He cannot be resisted. It is well your heart goes with your feet. Now sleep.”
She passed in silently, and sat all night by the small cotton mattress laid on the floor. How could she sleep?
Nor was there sleep for the Pandit. Sita Bai needed little telling, for she had listened behind the curtains; and now, with a livid pallor upon her, she confronted him.
“Lord of my life, what is there to say? You know—you know!”
“I know,” he answered heavily.
Sita Bai was too dutiful a wife to reproach her husband with anything done; but his own thoughts returned to the long evenings spent in contemplating the Perfections of the God. He replied to his thought.
“Yet had she never heard his name, it had been the same. Nothing could have saved her from the temple of Jagannath.”
“Saved.” He caught the word back from his own lips in deadly fear, and added in haste: “Whom the God honours cannot set his grace aside, and there is none who would. None in heaven or earth.”
“None,” echoed the woman faintly. Then, in a whisper scarcely to be heard, “Whom Nilkant Rai chooses”—and steadily averted her eyes.
They dared say no more of this even in whispers to each other; for if this were reported, grief, ruin, death were the sure end.
One word more did Anand Pandit breathe:—
“She must keep her joy. It is the God’s. If he love her, he yet may save her. Let no word be said.”
She touched his feet in token of submission. All night they sat in a bitter silence.
Next day, all through the little holy town, bathing in its glad sunshine beneath the swaying palms, had run the news of this honour. Sita Bai, with a mask of gladness fixed on her face, visited the wife of the goldsmith, and begged her sympathy with the divine event. The gold bangles rang as she joined her hands; for she had come clad in splendour, and her sari was of purple silk of Paitan woven with strands of gold.
When Radha went with her mother to the temple, crowds of the simple people had gathered by the lake beneath the neems and tamarinds to behold the beauty beloved of the God. True, they had seen it before, but to-day it was strange and new. Her throat rose like the stem of the lotus above the snowy folds of her sari, and like the purity of the lotus was her face with its downward eyes hidden in heavy lashes. She moved already like a bride, a little apart from her mother, to whom she had clung hitherto.
A voice shouted, “Jai Krishna!” (Victory to Krishna), and many voices took up the cry. A woman, quivering with eagerness, flung a garland of wet marigolds about her neck. Flowers were strewn before her happy feet. Never before had a Bride been chosen from Krishnapur. It might well seem the benediction of the God.
A beautiful woman, in a sari of jade-green and silver, pressed up close to her and whispered,—
“Pray for me, O Beautiful, when you lie in the arms of the God, for me Ramu, wife of Narayan the Sahoukhar, that I may bear a son. Surely he will grant it for a wedding gift!” She stooped to the feet of Radha to worship her.
“I will pray,” the bride answered, pacing gently onward.
Petitions poured in upon her as she moved through the dappled light and shadow of the trees, beside the melted jewels of the lake. A great gladness possessed her. It was as if the air upbore her light feet; and the people followed in crowding joy until she made theashtanga—the great prostration before the Flute-Player, the Alone, the Beautiful, who moves through the world scattering joy and love with the far music of his Flute—He to whom all and none may draw near.
When the people were gone and the sun had set, and quiet breathed from the grey garments of evening, she entreated her father to read to her from the Song of Songs, written by the sweet-voiced singer Jayadeva, who has sounded all the secrets of love.
At first he hesitated, then with a strange look upward, he read.
“ ‘This is the story of the anguish of Radha.
“ ‘For Radha, jasmine-bosomed, beautiful, waited in vain for her immortal Lover, by the banks of Jumna. This is the Dark Night of the Soul, for the face of the Beloved is averted in eclipse. In her sight, joyous and joy-giving, he lingers on the banks of Jumna with the happy herd-maids, while thekoelsflute their softkoo-hoo-ooin the deep green shade. And the poet makes the invocation:—
“ ‘ “Krishna, Lord of Love, stoop from thy throne to aid us. Deign to lift up our hearts for the sake of this song that is the cry of all who shed the tears of desertion as Radha shed them.”
“ ‘And Radha cries aloud in her despair:—