“O God, in every temple I see people that see Thee, and in every language they praise Thee.If it be a mosque, men murmur the holy prayer, and if it be a Christian church they ring the bell from love to Thee.Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the mosque, but it is Thou whom I seek from temple to temple.Thine elect have no dealings with heresy or orthodoxy, for neither of these stands behind the screen of thy Truth.Heresy to the heretic and religion to the orthodox!But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume-seller!”
“O God, in every temple I see people that see Thee, and in every language they praise Thee.
If it be a mosque, men murmur the holy prayer, and if it be a Christian church they ring the bell from love to Thee.
Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the mosque, but it is Thou whom I seek from temple to temple.
Thine elect have no dealings with heresy or orthodoxy, for neither of these stands behind the screen of thy Truth.
Heresy to the heretic and religion to the orthodox!
But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume-seller!”
Yes,—and an ancient Japanese poet, going yet deeper, says this thing: “So long as the mind of a man is in accord with the Truth, the Gods will hear him though he do not pray.”
I passed the night at a little rest-house and next day set out on the long journey to Polonnarewa, and beyond that to Trincomali, through a wild part of Ceylon, stopping each night at the rest-houses which mark the way. Jungle in India is often mere scrub; this is thousands of acres of mighty forest. A small road has been driven through it, and on either side rises the dark and secret wall of trees, impenetrable for miles, knitted with creepers and blind with undergrowth—a dangerous mystery.
“Thousand eyeballs under hoods,Have you by the hair.”
“Thousand eyeballs under hoods,Have you by the hair.”
“Thousand eyeballs under hoods,Have you by the hair.”
“Thousand eyeballs under hoods,
Have you by the hair.”
It seems that every movement is watched, that strained ears listen to every breath from the secrecy that can never be pierced.
Much farther on the forest opens into the ancient tank of Minneri, for these great artificial lakes of the bygone Kings here and in India are called tanks. It is a glorious lake twenty miles in circumference and I saw it first with the mountains, exquisite in form and colour, rising behind it in the rose and gold of a great sunset. Some forgotten King made it to water the country, and there are still the very sluices unbroken though choked by masses of fallen masonry. It is the work of great engineers. No place could be more lovely—the silver fish leaping in translucent water, and one pouched pelican with its ax-like beak drifting lazily in a glory so dazzling, that one could only glimpse it a moment in the dipping sparkles of the reflected sun. The way, like the ascent to Mihintale, was banked with masses of the Sensitive Plant, lovely with its fragile pink flowers and delicately folding and dropping leaves, fainting as you brush them in passing.
But the lake—the wide expanse, calm as heaven and a shimmer of rose and blue and gold! I lingered to watch it—the strange beautiful grotesque of the great bird floating above its own perfect image. It was evening and the jungle was sweet with all the scents drawn out of it during the long sun-steeped day—heavenly scents that come from the teeming life in the mysterious forests, fresh forests germinating on the ruins of the old—murmuring, calling, vibrating with life and wonder and strange existences, and their endless chain of blossom and decay.
It grew dark soon after Minneri, and the fireflies were glittering about us and the moonlight white on the narrow way. A whispering silence filled the air with unseen presences as of the feet that long, long centuries ago trod this way on their errands of pleasure or pain to the dead city of my goal. I could almost see its spectral towers and palaces down the moon-blanched glades. Illusion—nothing more.
The driver missed the track to Polonnarewa, but that mattered little, so wonderful was the night in the lonely place and the great dark where once a mighty people moved, and now but the moon and stars circle before a dead majesty.
But at the long last we found our way and the little rest-house which stands where stood the royal city, near a dim glimmer of water. The only accommodation was a chair, but that was welcome, and when I woke in the grey dawn she came gliding with silver feet over the loveliest lake rippling up to the steps of the fairy house in the woods, and peopled by the glorious rose lotus, grown by the ancient people for the service of the Temples. And the traveller whom I met there went out before breakfast and brought in for provender a pea-hen, a wood pigeon, and a great grey fish from the lake. For myself, I eat like a Buddhist priest and am content,—living foods were not for me.
The ruins at Polonnarewa are wonderful indeed, much more perfect than those of the better known Anaradhapura, though it does not offer, like the latter, the marvellous row of the Buddhas who have fulfilled their mission and that Buddha of Love who is yet to come. All about are temples with colossal Buddhas, palaces, the strangely sculptured stone rails which are so distinctively Buddhist surrounding richly carved shrines. Hinduism mingled with Buddhism also. Some of these beautiful relics have been dug out of the jungle strata, some reclaimed from the invading growths which are so all-obliterating in a tropic country, and no doubt there is as much more to be discovered. The carved work is exquisitely lovely. How strong is the passion for beauty—in the very ends of the earth it is found, and surely it confirms the Platonic teaching that it is a reflection of that passion of joy in which the Creator beheld his work on the seventh day and knew that it was good.
I cannot describe the wonder of passing through these glades and lawns and seeing the great dagobas, those mighty buildings of brick, but now waving with greenery, enshrining each its holy relic. Would that it were possible to imagine the city which dwelt under their shadow! But the homes of men pass very swiftly away. It is only the homes of their souls which abide. Yet the jungle is more wonderful than what it buries. The sunlit walls of green guard the road jealously. The sun-flecks only struggle a few inches within that line, and then—trackless secrecy. A bird flew out, jewelled, gorgeous, “Half angel and half bird.” Are there greater wonders within? Who can tell? It is sometimes death to attempt to lift the veil of Isis. I saw the gravestone of a young man who for all his strength and youth was lost in the jungle—caught in the poisoned sweetness of her embrace and so died. It may have been a lonely and fearful death, and yet again—who knows! There are compensations of which we know nothing.
I stayed at the little rest-house of Kantelai on its lake with the jungle creeping and whispering about it— “Dark mother ever gliding near with soft feet.” Days to be remembered—unspeakably beautiful—they leave some precious deposit in the memory almost more lovely than the sight itself, as in the world of thought the spirit is more than the body.
And for the end to my journey the great and noble harbour of Trincomali! I wonder why tourists so seldom go there, but the ways of the tourist pass understanding. It winds about in lakes of sea blue among palms and coral bights and glittering beaches. Long ago, the people drifting over from India built a temple where the old fort now stands, and though thus polluted the site is still holy and you may see the Brahman priest cast offerings into the sea from a ledge high up the cliff, with the worshipping people about him. Then the Portuguese swept down upon Ceylon in their great naval days when they were the Sweepers of the Sea, and they destroyed the temple and built their fort. And the Dutch followed, and the Portuguese vanished, and the French conquered the Dutch, and again the Dutch the French, and then the English, hawking over the Seven Seas, pounced like the osprey, and the Dutch sovereignty passed into their keeping. Did I not say the Island had many masters?
So the English made this a great fortified place, humming with naval and military activity; men-of-war lying in the bay, guns bristling in the beautiful old fort that guards the cliff. And now all that too is gone—blown away like a wreath of mist, and the only soldiers and sailors are those who will stay forever in the little grave-place under the palms, and if it so continues I daresay the jungle will take Trincomali as it has taken the City of Kings.
A beautiful place. I wandered on the beach among the shells one marvelled to see as a child, when sailor friends gave them into eager hands—deep brown freckled polished things, leopard-spotted and ivory-lipped, and so smooth that the hand slips off the perfect surface. Delicate frailties of opal and pearl shimmering with mystic colour, spiny grotesques with long thorned stems—there they all lay for the gathering. And at last I went up into the old fort.
It covers many acres on the cliff and the jungle is steadily conquering the empty bungalows and fortifications. It is very old, for the Dutch built it in 1650. Now in the thickets the forsaken guns make an empty bravado like toothless lions. I saw a deer and her fawn come peering shyly through the bushes, and they fled before me. The casements are empty and a flagless flagstaff looks over the heavenly calm of the sea.
Almost lost in the shade I found some old Dutch graves, very square and formal—a something of the rigidity of the burgomaster about them still, as of stiff-ruffed men and women. “Here sleeps in God—” said one mossy inscription (but in Dutch)—and then a break, and then “Johanna” and another break, and only a word here and there and a long obliterated date. And the Dutch were masters and Johanna slept in the ground of her people as securely as if it had been The Hague itself. So it must then have seemed. And now it is English, and whose next? Truly the fashion of this world passeth away! They were touching, those old tombs, with inscriptions that once were watered with tears, that no one now cares to decipher. And there they lie forgotten in the sighing trees, and the world goes by. The dominion of oblivion is secure, whatever that of death may be.
I climbed down to a casement in the cliff, half-way to the sea, a little shelf overlooking the blue transparence that met the blue horizon, and wondered what the grave God-fearing talk of the Dutchmen had been as they leaned over the parapet, discussing the ways of the heathen and the encroachments of the British. And from there I made my way to the rocks below with the brilliant water heaving about them. Some large fish of the most perfect forget-me-not blue shading into periwinkle mauve on the fins were playing before me, and as they rolled over, or a ripple took them they displayed the underside, a faint rose pink. Such beautiful happy creatures in the wash of the wandering water clear and liquid as light! Sometimes they wavered like moons under a ripple, a blot of heavenliest blue, submerged and quivering, sometimes a shoal of black fish barred with gold swam in among them, beautiful to see. I could have stayed all day, for it was heavenly cool, with a soft sea breeze blowing through the rocks, but even as I watched a great brown monster came wallowing through the water, and my beauties fled like swallows.
The touch of tragedy was not wanting, for high on the cliff was a little pillar to the memory of a Dutch girl who fell in love long ago with an Englishman—a false lover, who sailed away and left her heartbroken. Here she watched his sails lessening along the sky, and as they dipped below the horizon, she threw herself over the cliff in unendurable anguish.
A tragic story, but it is all so long ago that it has fallen back into the beauty of nature and is now no more sad than a sunset that casts its melancholy glory before it fades. Yet I wonder whether in all the hide and seek of rebirth she has caught up somewhere with her Englishman! She knows all about Psyche’s wings by this time, and he too must have gained a dear-bought wisdom through “the great mercy of the gift of departing,” as the Buddhists call it . . . they to whom death is so small an episode in so long a story.
I sat by the pillar and watched the dying torch of the sunset extinguished in the sea—a sea of glass mingled with fire. And very quietly the stars appeared one by one in a violet sky and it was night.
THE WONDERFUL PILGRIMAGE TO AMARNATH
THE WONDERFUL PILGRIMAGE TO AMARNATH
In all India there is nothing more wonderful than the pilgrimages of millions, which set like tidal waves at certain seasons to certain sacrosanct places—the throngs that flock to holy Benares, to Hardwar, and to that meeting of the waters at Prayag, where the lustral rites purify soul and body, and the pilgrims return shriven and glad. But of all the pilgrimages in India the most touching, the most marvellous, is that to Amarnath, nearly twelve thousand feet up in the Himalayas. The cruel difficulties to be surmounted, the august heights to be climbed (for a part of the way is much higher than the height at which the Cave stands), the wild and terrible beauty of the journey, and the glorious close when the Cave is reached, make this pilgrimage the experience of a lifetime even for a European. What must it not be for a true believer? Yet, in the deepest sense, I should advise none to make it who is not a true believer—who cannot sympathize to the uttermost with the wave of faith and devotion that sends these poor pilgrims climbing on torn and wearied feet to the great Himalayan heights, where they not infrequently lay down their lives before reaching the silver pinnacles that hold their hearts’ desire.
I have myself made the pilgrimage, and it was one of the deepest experiences of my life; while, as for the beauty and wonder of the journey, all words break down under the effort to express them.
But first for a few words about the God who is the object of devotion. The Cave is sacred to Siva—the Third Person of the Hindu Trinity; that Destroyer who, in his other aspects, is the Creator and Preserver. He is the God especially of the Himalayas—the Blue-Throated God, from the blue mists of the mountains that veil him. The Crescent in his hair is the young moon, resting on the peak that is neighbour to the stars. The Ganges wanders in the matted forests of his hair before the maddening torrents fling their riches to the Indian plains, even as the snow-rivers wander in the mountain pine forests. He is also Nataraja—Lord of the Cosmic Dance; and one of the strangest and deepest-wrought parables in the world is that famous image where, in a wild ecstasy, arms flung out, head flung back in a passion of motion, he dances the Tandavan, the whole wild joy of the figure signifying the cosmic activities of Creation, Maintenance and Destruction. “For,” says a Tamil text, “our Lord is a Dancer, who like the heat latent in firewood, diffuses his power in mind and matter, and makes them dance in their turn.”
The strange affinity of this conception with the discoveries of science relating to the eternal dance of the atom and electron gives it the deepest interest. I would choose this aspect of the God as that which should fill the mind of the Amarnath pilgrim. Let him see the Great God Mahadeo (Magnus Deus), with the drum in one hand which symbolizes creative sound—the world built, as it were, to rhythm and music. Another hand is upraised bidding the worshipper, “Fear not!” A third hand points to his foot, the refuge where the soul may cling. The right foot rests lightly on a demon—to his strength, what is it? A nothing, the mere illusion of reality! In his hair, crowned with the crescent moon, sits the Ganges, a nymph entangled in its forest. This is the aspect of Mahadeo which I carried in my own mind as I made the pilgrimage, for thus is embodied a very high mysticism, common to all the faiths.
Of all the deities of India Maheshwara is the most complex and bewildering in his many aspects. He is the Great Ascetic, but he is also Lord of the beautiful daughter of the Himalaya,—Uma, Parwati, Gauri, Girija, the Snowy One, the Inaccessible, the Virgin, the Mystic Mother of India, to give but a few of her many and lovely names. She too has her differing aspects. As Kali, she is the goddess of death and destruction; as Parwati, the very incarnation of the charm and sweetness of the Eternal Femine. As Uma she is especially Himalayan.
In the freezing mountain lake of Manasarovar she did age-long penance for her attempt to win the heart of the Great Ascetic, the Supreme Yogi,—her lovely body floating like a lily upon its icy deeps, and so, at long last, winning him for ever. She is the seeker of mountains, the Dweller in the Windhya Hills, the complement of her terrible Lord and Lover, whose throne is Mount Kailasa. Yet in some of his moods she must be completely absorbed and subjugated to ensure his companionship, for he is the archetype of the perfected human yogi of whom says the ancient Song Celestial that “he abides alone in a secret place without desire and without possessions, upon a firm seat, with the working of the mind and senses held in check, with body, head and neck in perfect equipoise, meditating in order that he may reach the boundless Abyss; he who knows the infinite joy that lies beyond the senses and so becomes like an unflickering lamp in a lonely place.”
This union is possible to Parwati and her Lord. So dear are they each to the other that they are often represented as a single image of which one half is male, the other female, the dual nature in perfect harmony in the Divine.
Thus then is the Great God to be visited in the high-uplifted secret shrine of the mountains, which are themselves the Lotus flower of creation. At dawn, suffused through all their snows with glowing rose they dominate Indian thought as the crimson lotus of Brahma the Creator. At noon, blue in the radiant unveiled blue of the sky they are the blue Lotus of Vishnu the Preserver, the Pillar of Cosmic Law. At night, when all the earth is rapt insamadhi, the mystic ecstasy, they are the snowy Lotus, throne of Siva, Maheshwara the Great God, the Supreme Yogi when he dreams worlds beneath the dreaming moon upon his brow.
And India is herself a petal of the World Lotus of Asia as the Asiatic mind conceives it. Look at Asia of the maps and reverence the Flower which thrones all the Gods of Asia.
The Cave at Amarnath is sacred because a spring, eternally frozen, has in its rush taken the shape of the holy Lingam, which is the symbol of reproduction and therefore of Life. This is also the Pillar of the Universe—that Pillar which the Gods sought to measure, the one flying upward, the other downward, for aeons, seeking the beginning and the end, and finding none. Yet again, it is the Tree of Life, which has its roots in Eternity, and branches through the mythology of many peoples. And if there are degenerated forms of this worship, surely the same may be said of many others. And it is needful to know these things in order to realize the significance of the worship.
The pilgrimage can be made only in July and August. Before and after, a barrier of snow and ice closes the way, and makes the Cave a desolation.
The start is made from Pahlgam, a tiny village on the banks of the Lidar River in Kashmir, where it leaps from the great glacier of Kolahoi to join the Jhelum River in the Happy Valley. Pahlgam itself stands at a height of about eight thousand feet.
The day before we started there was a great thunderstorm, the grandest I have ever known. The mountains were so close on each side that they tossed the thunder backwards and forwards to each other, and the shattering and roaring of the echoes was like the battles of the Gods or the rolling of Maheshwara’s mighty drum in the mountain hollows, while the continuous blue glare of the lightning was almost appalling. It was strange to feel only a little web of canvas between ourselves and that elemental strife when the rain followed as if the fountains of the great deep were broken up—cold as snow, stinging like hail, and so steady that it looked like crystal harpstrings as it fell. Yet next day we waked to a silver rain-washed world, sparkling with prisms of rain and dew; fresh snow on the mountains, and delicate webs of soft blue mist caught like smoke in the pines.
So we set forth from Pahlgam, with our cavalcade of rough hill ponies carrying the tents and provisions and all our substance, and began our march by climbing up the river that flows from those eternal heights into the Pahlgam valley. Much of the way can be ridden if one rides very slowly and carefully for these wonderful animals are sure-footed as cats; but the track is often terrifying—broken boulders and the like. If the ponies were not marvels, it could not be done; and if one were not a safe rider, one certainly could not stick on. The pony gives a strong hoist of his fore-legs, and you are up one rock and hanging on by his withers; then a strong hoist of the hind legs and you are nearly over his neck; and this goes on for hours; and when it is beyond the pony you climb on your feet, and ford the torrents as best you may.
Up and up the steep banks of the river we climbed, among the pines and mighty tumbled boulders. Up by the cliffs, where the path hangs and trembles over the water roaring beneath. On the opposite side the mountains soared above the birches and pines, and the torrents hung down them like mist, falling, falling from crag to crag, and shattering like spray-dust as they fell. Once a mighty eagle soared above us, balancing on the wind, and then floated away without a single motion of his wings—wonderful to see; and the spread of his wings was greater than the height of the tallest man.
We had long passed the last few huts, and the track wound steadily higher, when suddenly growing on us, I heard a deep musical roar like the underlying bass of an orchestra—the full-chorded voice of many waters. And as we turned a corner where the trail hung like a line round the cliff, behold, a mighty gorge of pines and uplifted hills, and the river pouring down in a tremendous waterfall, boiling and foaming white as it fell into the raging pit beneath.
What a sight! We stopped and looked, every sense steeped in the wonder of it. For the air was cool with the coolness that comes like breath off a river; our ears were full of the soft thunder; the smell of pines was like the taste of a young world in one’s mouth; yet it was all phantasmal, in a way, as if it could not be real. I watched the lovely phantom, for it hung like a thing unreal between heaven and earth, until it grew dreamlike to me and dyed my brain with sound and colour, and it was hard indeed to pass on.
That night we camped in a mountain valley some two thousand feet above Pahlgam. It was like climbing from story to story in a House of Wonder. The river was rushing by our tents when they were pitched, pale green and curling back upon itself, as if it were loath to leave these pure heights, and the mountains stood about us like a prison, almost as if we might go no farther. And when I stood outside my tent just before turning in, a tremulous star was poised on one of the peaks, like the topmost light on a Christmas tree, and the Great Bear which in India is the constellation of the Seven Rishis, or Sages, lay across the sky glittering frostily in the blue-blackness.
I had a narrow escape that day; for, as I was leading the cavalcade, I met a wild hill-rider in the trail between two great rocks, and his unbroken pony kicked out at me savagely with his foreleg and caught me above the ankle. Luckily, they do not shoe their horses here; but it was pretty bad for a bit, and I was glad of the night’s rest.
Next day we started and rounded out of the tiny valley; and lo! on the other side another river, flowing apparently out of a great arch in the mountainside. Out it poured, rejoicing to be free; and when I looked, it was flowing, not from the mountain but from a snow-bridge. Mighty falls of snow had piled up at the foot of the mountain, as they slipped from its steeps; and then the snow, melting above, had come down as a torrent and eaten its way through the wide arch of this cave. Often one must cross a river on these snow-bridges, and at a certain stage of melting they are most dangerous; for, if the snow should give, there may be frightful depths beneath.
Here first I noticed how beautiful were the flowers of the heights. The men gathered and brought me tremulous white and blue columbines, and wild wallflowers, orange-coloured and so deeply scented that I could close my eyes and call up a cottage garden, and the beehives standing in sedate rows under the thatched eaves. And there was a glorious thistle, new to me, as tall as a man, well armed and girded with blue and silver spears and a head of spiky rays. Bushes, also, like great laurels, but loaded with rosy berries that the Kashmiris love.
We turned then round a huge fallen rock, green and moist with hanging ferns, and shining with the spray of the river, and before us was a mountain, and an incredible little trail winding up it, and that was our way. I looked and doubted. It is called the Pisu, or Flea Ascent, on the dubious ground that it takes a flea’s activity to negotiate it. Of course, it was beyond the ponies, except here and there, on what I called breathers, and so we dismounted. The men advised us to clutch the ponies’ tails, and but for that help it would have been difficult to manage. My heart was pumping in my throat, and I could feel the little pulses beating in my eyes, before I had gone far, and every few minutes we had to stop; for even the guides were speechless from the climb, and I could see the ponies’ hearts beating hard and fast under the smooth coats.
But still we held on, and now beside us were blooming the flower-gardens of the brief and brilliant Himalayan summer—beds of delicate purple anemones, gorgeous golden ranunculus holding its golden shields to the sun, orange poppies, masses of forget-me-nots of a deep, glowing blue—aburningblue, not like the fair azure of the Western flower, but like the royal blue of the Virgin’s robe in a Flemish missal. And above these swayed the bells of the columbines on their slender stems, ranging from purest white, through a faint, misty blue, to a deep, glooming purple. We could hardly go on for joy of the flowers. It was a marvel to see all these lovely things growing wild and uncared for, flinging their sweetness on the pure air, and clothing the ways with beauty. And at each turn fresh snow-peaks emerged against the infinite blue of the sky—some with frail wisps of white cloud caught in the spires, and some bold and clear as giants ranged for battle—the lotus petals of the Infinite Flower.
And so we climbed up and reached another story, and lay down to rest and breathe before we went farther up into wonderland.
The top was a grassy “marg,” or meadow, cloven down to the heart of the earth by a fierce river. Around it was a vast amphitheatre of wild crags and peaks; and beneath these, but ever upward, lay our trail. But the meadow was like the field in Sicily where Persephone was gathering flowers when she was snatched away by Dis to reign in the Underworld. I remembered Leighton’s picture of her, floating up from the dead dark, like a withered flower, and stretching her hands to the blossoms of the earth once more. I never saw such flowers; they could scarcely be seen elsewhere.
And here the myriad blossoms layIn shattered rainbows on the grass.Exulting in their little dayThey laughed aloud to see us pass.We left them in their merriment,—The singing angels of the snows,—And still we climbed the steep ascentAlong the sunward way it knows.
And here the myriad blossoms layIn shattered rainbows on the grass.Exulting in their little dayThey laughed aloud to see us pass.We left them in their merriment,—The singing angels of the snows,—And still we climbed the steep ascentAlong the sunward way it knows.
And here the myriad blossoms layIn shattered rainbows on the grass.Exulting in their little dayThey laughed aloud to see us pass.
And here the myriad blossoms lay
In shattered rainbows on the grass.
Exulting in their little day
They laughed aloud to see us pass.
We left them in their merriment,—The singing angels of the snows,—And still we climbed the steep ascentAlong the sunward way it knows.
We left them in their merriment,—
The singing angels of the snows,—
And still we climbed the steep ascent
Along the sunward way it knows.
The snow had slipped off the meadow,—was rushing away in the thundering river far below,—and the flowers were crowding each other, rejoicing in the brief gladness of summer before they should be shrouded again under the chilly whiteness. But their colour took revenge on it now. They glowed, they sang and shouted for joy—such was the vibration of their radiance! I have never dreamed of such a thing before.
And then came our next bad climb, up the bed of a ragged mountain torrent and across it, with the water lashing at us like a whip. I do not know how the ponies did it. They were clutched and dragged by the ears and tails, and a man seized me by the arms and hauled me up and round the face of a precipice, where to miss one step on the loose stones would have been to plunge into depths I preferred not to look at. Then another ascent like the Flea, but shorter, and we were a story higher, in another wild marg, all frosted silver with edelweiss, and glorious with the flowers of another zone—flowers that cling to the bare and lichened rock and ask no foothold of earth.
That was a wild way. We climbed and climbed steadfastly, sometimes riding, sometimes walking, and round us were rocks clothed with rose-red saxifrage, shaded into pink, and myriads of snowy stars, each with a star of ruby in its heart. Clouds still of the wonderful forget-me-not climbed with us. Such rock gardens! No earthly hand could plant those glowing masses and set them against the warm russets and golds of the lower crags, lifted up into this mighty sky world. The tenderness of the soft form and radiant colour of these little flowers in the cruel grasp of the rocks, yet softening them into grace with the short summer of their lives, is exquisitely touching. It has the pathos of all fragility and brief beauty.
Later we climbed a great horn of rock, and rounded a slender trail, and before was another camping-place—the Shisha-Nag Lake among the peaks. We saw its green river first, bursting through a rocky gateway, and then, far below, the lake itself,—
We passed the frozen sea of glassWhere never human foot has trod,Green as a clouded chrysopraseAnd lonely as a dream of God.—
We passed the frozen sea of glassWhere never human foot has trod,Green as a clouded chrysopraseAnd lonely as a dream of God.—
We passed the frozen sea of glassWhere never human foot has trod,Green as a clouded chrysopraseAnd lonely as a dream of God.—
We passed the frozen sea of glass
Where never human foot has trod,
Green as a clouded chrysoprase
And lonely as a dream of God.—
reflecting the snowy pinnacles above. The splintered peaks stand about it. Until July it is polished ice, and out of one side opens a solemn ante-chapel blocked with snow. The lake itself is swept clear and empty. The moon climbs the peaks and looks down, and the constellations swing above it. A terrible, lonely place, peopled only by shadows. It was awful to think of the pomps of sunrise, noon, and sunset passing overhead, and leaving it to the night and dream which are its only true companions. It should never be day there—always black, immovable Night, crouching among the snows and staring down with all her starlight eyes into that polished icy mirror.
For days we went. We left their mirthFor where the springs of light arise,And dawns lean over to the earth,And stars are split to lower skiesWhite, white the wastes around us lay,The wild peaks gathered round to seeOur fires affront the awful day,Our speech the torrents’ giant glee.
For days we went. We left their mirthFor where the springs of light arise,And dawns lean over to the earth,And stars are split to lower skiesWhite, white the wastes around us lay,The wild peaks gathered round to seeOur fires affront the awful day,Our speech the torrents’ giant glee.
For days we went. We left their mirthFor where the springs of light arise,And dawns lean over to the earth,And stars are split to lower skiesWhite, white the wastes around us lay,The wild peaks gathered round to seeOur fires affront the awful day,Our speech the torrents’ giant glee.
For days we went. We left their mirth
For where the springs of light arise,
And dawns lean over to the earth,
And stars are split to lower skies
White, white the wastes around us lay,
The wild peaks gathered round to see
Our fires affront the awful day,
Our speech the torrents’ giant glee.
We camped above the lake, and it was cold—cold! A bitter wind blew through the rocks—a wind shrilling in a waste land. Now and then it shifted a little and brought the hoarse roar of some distant torrent or the crash of an avalanche. And then, for the first time I heard the cry of the marmot—a piercing note which intensifies the desolation. We saw them too, sitting by their burrows; and then they shrieked and dived and were gone.
We made a little stir of life for a while—the men pitching our tents and running here and there to gather stunted juniper bushes for fuel, and get water from an icy stream that rippled by. But I knew we were only interlopers. We would be gone next day, and chilly silence would settle down on our blackened camp-fires.
In the piercing cold that cut like a knife I went out at night, to see the lake, a solemn stillness under the moon. I cannot express the awe of the solitudes. As long as I could bear the cold, I intruded my small humanity; and then one could but huddle into the camp-bed and try to shut out the immensities, and sleep our little human sleep, with the camp-fires flickering through the curtains, and the freezing stars above.
Next day we had to climb a very great story higher. Up and up the track went steadily, with a sheer fall at one side and a towering wall on the other. We forded a river where my feet swung into it as the pony, held by two men, plunged through. It is giddy, dazzling work to ford these swift rivers. You seem to be stationary; only the glitter of the river sweeps by, and the great stones trip the pony. You think you are done, and then somehow and suddenly you are at the other side.
And here a strange thing happened. When the morning came, we found that asadhu—a wandering pilgrim—had reached the same height on his way to the Cave. He was resting by the way, very wearied, and shuddering with the cold. So I ventured to speak to him and welcome him to our fire and to such food (rice) as he could accept from some of our men; and there, when we stopped for the mid-day meal, he sat among us like a strange bird dropped from alien skies. Sometimes these men are repulsive enough, but this one—I could have thought it was Kabir himself! Scrupulously clean, though poor as human being could be, he would have come up from the burning plains with his poor breast bare to the scarring wind, but that some charitable native had given him a little cotton coat. A turban, a loin-cloth looped between the legs, leaving them naked, grass sandals on feet coarse with travelling, and a string of roughly carved wooden beads such as the Great Ascetic himself wears in his images were all his possessions, except the little wallet that carried his food—rice and a kind of lentil. I thought of Epictetus, the saint of ancient Rome, and his one tattered cloak.
A wandering sadhu; far he came,His thin feet worn by endless roads;Yet in his eyes there burnt the flameThat light the altars of the Gods.The keen wind scarred his naked breast.I questioned him, and all the whileThe quiet of a heart at restShone in his secret patient smile.Yes, he had come from hot Bengal,From scorching plains to peaks of ice;Took what was given as chance might fall,And begged his little dole of rice.“And have you friends, or any child?Or any home?” He shook his head,And threw his hands out as he smiled,And “Empty,” was the word he said.And so he sat beside our fire,As strange birds drop from alien skies,Gentle but distant, never nigher,With that remoteness in his eyes.
A wandering sadhu; far he came,His thin feet worn by endless roads;Yet in his eyes there burnt the flameThat light the altars of the Gods.The keen wind scarred his naked breast.I questioned him, and all the whileThe quiet of a heart at restShone in his secret patient smile.Yes, he had come from hot Bengal,From scorching plains to peaks of ice;Took what was given as chance might fall,And begged his little dole of rice.“And have you friends, or any child?Or any home?” He shook his head,And threw his hands out as he smiled,And “Empty,” was the word he said.And so he sat beside our fire,As strange birds drop from alien skies,Gentle but distant, never nigher,With that remoteness in his eyes.
A wandering sadhu; far he came,His thin feet worn by endless roads;Yet in his eyes there burnt the flameThat light the altars of the Gods.
A wandering sadhu; far he came,
His thin feet worn by endless roads;
Yet in his eyes there burnt the flame
That light the altars of the Gods.
The keen wind scarred his naked breast.I questioned him, and all the whileThe quiet of a heart at restShone in his secret patient smile.
The keen wind scarred his naked breast.
I questioned him, and all the while
The quiet of a heart at rest
Shone in his secret patient smile.
Yes, he had come from hot Bengal,From scorching plains to peaks of ice;Took what was given as chance might fall,And begged his little dole of rice.
Yes, he had come from hot Bengal,
From scorching plains to peaks of ice;
Took what was given as chance might fall,
And begged his little dole of rice.
“And have you friends, or any child?Or any home?” He shook his head,And threw his hands out as he smiled,And “Empty,” was the word he said.
“And have you friends, or any child?
Or any home?” He shook his head,
And threw his hands out as he smiled,
And “Empty,” was the word he said.
And so he sat beside our fire,As strange birds drop from alien skies,Gentle but distant, never nigher,With that remoteness in his eyes.
And so he sat beside our fire,
As strange birds drop from alien skies,
Gentle but distant, never nigher,
With that remoteness in his eyes.
This was a man of about fifty-five, tall, thin, with a sensitive face, yet with something soldierly about him; dignified and quiet, with fine hawk-like features and strained bright eyes in hollow caves behind the gaunt cheek-bones. A beautiful face in both line and expression; a true mystic, if ever I saw one!
He told me he had walked from Bengal (look at the map and see what that means!) and that the poor people were very kind and gave him a little rice sometimes, when they had it, and sometimes a tiny coin, asking only his prayers in return. That he needed very little, never touching meat or fish or eggs, which he did not think could be pleasing to God. For sixteen years he had been thus passing from one sacred place to the other—from the holy Benares to Hardwar where the Ganges leaves the hills, and farther still, praying—praying to the One. “There is One God,” he said; and again I thought of Kabir, the supreme mystic, the incarnate Joy, who also wandered through India,—striving, like this man:
He has looked upon God, and his eyeballs are clear;There was One, there is One, and but One, saith Kabir,—To learn and discern of his brother the clod,And his brother the beast, and his brother the God.
He has looked upon God, and his eyeballs are clear;There was One, there is One, and but One, saith Kabir,—To learn and discern of his brother the clod,And his brother the beast, and his brother the God.
He has looked upon God, and his eyeballs are clear;There was One, there is One, and but One, saith Kabir,—
He has looked upon God, and his eyeballs are clear;
There was One, there is One, and but One, saith Kabir,—
To learn and discern of his brother the clod,And his brother the beast, and his brother the God.
To learn and discern of his brother the clod,
And his brother the beast, and his brother the God.
But does it not fill one with thoughts? That man had a soul at rest and a clear purpose. And the Christ and the Buddha were sadhus; and if it seem waste to spend the sunset of a life in prayer, that may be the grossest of errors. We do not know the rules of the Great Game. How should we judge? So he came with us, striding behind the ponies with his long steadfast stride, and his company was pleasing to me.
That was a wondrous climb. Had any God ever such an approach to his sanctuary as this Great God of the heights? We climbed through a huge amphitheatre of snows, above us the ribbed and crocketed crags of a mighty mountain. It was wild architecture—fearful buttresses, springing arches, and terrible foundations rooted in the earth’s heart; and, above, a high clerestory, where the Dawn might walk and look down through the hollow eyeholes of the windows into the deeps of the precipice below.
I suppose the architect was the soft persistence of water, for I could see deep beach-marks on the giant walls. But there it stood, crowned with snow, and we toiled up it, and landed on the next story, the very water-shed of these high places—a point much higher than the goal of our journey. And that was very marvellous, for we were now in the bare upper world, with only the sky above us, blue and burning on the snow, the very backbone of the range; and, like the Great Divide, the rivers were flowing both ways, according to the inclination of the source.
Before us lay snow which must be crossed, and endless streams and rivers half or wholly buried in snow. That was a difficult time. The ponies were slipping, sliding, stumbling, yet brave, capable, wary as could be. I shall for ever respect these mountain ponies. They are sure-footed as goats and brave as lions and nothing else would serve in these high places. In Tibet they have been known to climb to the height of 20,000 feet.
Sometimes the snow was rotten, and we sank in; sometimes it was firm, and then we slipped along; sometimes riding was impossible, and then we picked our way with alpenstocks. But everywhere in the Pass summer had its brief victory, and the rivers were set free to feed the sultry Indian plains.
At last we won through to another high marg, a pocket of grass and blossom in the crags; and there, at Panjitarni, we camped. Of course, we had long been above all trees, but nothing seemed to daunt the flowers. This marg lay basking in the sun, without one fragment of shade except when the sun fell behind the peaks in the evening. But the flowers quivered, glowed, expanded. My feet were set on edelweiss, and the buttercups were pure gold. The stream ran before me pure as at the day-dawn of the world, and from all this innocent beauty I looked up to the untrodden snow, so near, yet where only the eagle’s wings could take her.
Next day was an enforced rest, for everyone, man and beast, was weary; so we basked in the sun, reading and writing, and but for the July snow and the awful peaks, it was hard to believe that one was in the upper chambers of the King’s Palace. Yet the air was strange, the water was strange, and it was like a wild fairy-tale to look down from my camp-bed and see the grey edelweiss growing thick beside it, and hear the shriek of the marmot.
Next day we should reach the Cave, and when it came the morning looked down upon us sweet and still—a perfect dawn.
First we crossed the marg, shining with buttercups, and climbed a little way up a hill under the snows, and then dropped down to the river-bed under caves of snow for the path above was blocked. It was strange to wade along through the swift, icy waters, with the snow-caves arching above us in the glowing sunlight. The light in these caves is a wonderful lambent green, for the reflected water is malachite green itself; but I was glad when the passage was over, for it looked as if some impending mass must fall and crush us.
We climbed painfully out of the water, and in front was a track winding straight up the mountain. It was clear that we could not ride up; but we could not delay, so we started as steadily as the ponies. I hardly know how they did it—the men dragged and encouraged them somehow. And still less do I know how we did it. The strain was great. At one point I felt as if my muscles would crack and my heart burst. We did the worst in tiny stages, resting every few minutes, and always before us was the sadhu winning steadily up the height. It was a weary, long climb, new elevations revealing themselves at every turn of the track. Finally, I fell on the top and lay for a bit to get my wind, speechless but triumphant.
We rode then along the face of the hill—an awful depth below, and beside us flowers even exceeding those we had seen. Purple asters, great pearl-white Christmas roses weighting their stems, orange-red ranunculus. It was a broken rainbow scattered on the grass. And above this heaven of colour was the Amarnath mountain at last—the goal.
Then came a descent when I hardly dared to look below me. That too could not be ridden. In parts the track had slipped away, and it was only about six inches wide. In others we had to climb over the gaps where it had slipped. At the foot we reached a mighty mountain ravine—a great cleft hewn in the mountain, filled like a bowl to a fourth of its huge depth with snow, and with streams and river rushing beneath. We could hear them roaring hollowly, and see them now and then in bare places. And at the end of the ravine, perhaps two miles off, a great cliff blocked the way, and in it was a black hole—and this was the Shrine.
The snow was so hard that we could ride much of the way, but with infinite difficulty, climbing and slipping where the water beneath had rotted the snow. In fact, this glen is one vast snow-bridge, so undermined is it by torrents. The narrowness of it and the towering mountains on each side make it a tremendous approach to the Shrine.
A snow-bridge broke suddenly under my pony and I thought I was gone; but a man caught me by the arm, and the pony made a wild effort and struggled to the rocks. And so we went on.
The Cave is high up the cliff, and I could see the sadhu’s figure striding swiftly on as if nothing could hold him back.
We dismounted before the Cave, and began the last climb to the mouth. I got there first, almost done, and lo! a great arch like that of the choir of a cathedral; and inside, a cave eaten by water into the rock, lighted by the vast arch, and shallow in comparison with its height of 150 feet. At the back, frozen springs issuing from the mountain. One of the springs, the culminating point of adoration, is the Lingam as it is seen in the temples of India—a very singular natural frost sculpture. Degraded in the associations of modern ignorance the mystic and educated behold in this small phallic pillar of purest ice the symbol of the Pillar of Cosmic Ascent, rooted in rapture of creation, rising to the rapture of the Immeasurable. It represents That within the circumference of which the universe swings to its eternal rhythm—That which, in the words of Dante, moves the sun and other stars. It is the stranger here because before it the clear ice has frozen into a flat, shallow altar.
The sadhu knelt before it, tranced in prayer. He had laid some flowers on the altar, and, head thrown back and eyes closed, was far away—in what strange heaven, who shall say? Unconscious of place or person, of himself, of everything but the Deity, he knelt, the perfect symbol of the perfect place. I could see his lips move— Was it the song of Kabir to the Eternal Dancer?—
He is pure and eternal,His form is infinite and fathomless.He dances in rapture and waves of form arise from his dance.The body and mind cannot contain themselves when touched by his divine joy.He holds all within his bliss.
He is pure and eternal,His form is infinite and fathomless.He dances in rapture and waves of form arise from his dance.The body and mind cannot contain themselves when touched by his divine joy.He holds all within his bliss.
He is pure and eternal,His form is infinite and fathomless.He dances in rapture and waves of form arise from his dance.The body and mind cannot contain themselves when touched by his divine joy.He holds all within his bliss.
He is pure and eternal,
His form is infinite and fathomless.
He dances in rapture and waves of form arise from his dance.
The body and mind cannot contain themselves when touched by his divine joy.
He holds all within his bliss.
What better praise for such a worshipper before him in whose ecstasy the worlds dance for delight—here where, in the great silence, the Great God broods on things divine? But I could not know——